Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA18394 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:36:23 GMT From: <Zylogy@aol.com> Message-ID: <7d.f95664d.2794d4a3@aol.com> Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 17:33:07 EST Subject: Re: phonosemantics To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk CC: Zylogy@aol.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 5.0 for Windows sub 129 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Mark Mills asks how important nonarbitrary phonosemantics is in the scheme of
things. Well, to begin with, many languages have very large proportions of
their root-stocks filled with forms which partake in the matrix-like
diagrammatical iconic motivation coming from phonosemantics. And historically
it is very likely that almost ALL roots come from such forms ultimately. The
only exceptions are those which are retreads- roots which themselves derive
from strings of worn out grammatical materials (but remember that all
grammatical affixes derive from roots, so there is a cycle involved here
too). It doesn't matter if words are borrowed- they have to come from
somewhere, and historical changes mean that it is highly unlikely that any
existing word or root can be genetically traced back to the dawn of human
language, given known attrition rates.
What else? My own interest has been in the development of a core semantic
system for AI and machine translation use. Haven't been able to get anyone to
sign on to help- remember that most professional linguists are unfamiliar
with the scads of confirmatory data, having been buried up to their ears in
Chomskyan and similar efforts at characterizing morphosyntax. The words I
study are outside the mainstream grammar of European languages, for reasons I
laid out in the previous post, at least when freshly coined from the matrix.
Most computational linguistics is done with European points of view in mind,
despite the occasional world-class language outside the family, such as
Korean or Japanese. And the lexicon is considered, by such linguists, to be
the junkpile of historical gobbledygook, and they only delve into its
intricacies when absolutely necessary (which has become increasingly the case
as they realize just how much of sentential semantics actually derives from
the words and not the syntax).
Shouldn't be tooooo difficult, though, to create a model generator for
ideophones/expressives, and THEN add layers above it to allow for all the
twists and turns of old vocabulary structure and meaning- wise. This is the
way languages evolve anyway. What computational folks are doing is
ass-backwards, trying to force-feed semantic primitive tags into the cheesier
word-forms without considering the pathways they have taken historically. Ask
almost any of em. They have a real distaste for any diachronic work. An
analogy would be trying to build an arch without a bootstrapping form beneath
it. Not too easy. But that's what they're doing.
There's even a sexy new movement in linguistics called Optimality Theory
which is now all the rage- which takes these predigested word forms as basic
and then tries to explain why languages seem to try to simplify them. Again
backwards. First you have to generate the nastier forms from nice neat
crystalline antecedents. Then everything makes sense. A cycle again. But
bells and whistles, not to mention fear for one's professional future, makes
everyone a nice team player.
Anyway, so far as I know no one has done any neural network modeling (if that
was what you were after), nor does anyone know where in the brain such
diagrammatic processing would take place (if that was). I'd like to both do
the former AND have answers to the latter. I've talked with a number of
professionals (big name types) at a number of events and haven't been able to
get to square one. So it seems I will not only have to reinvent the wheel but
engineer an entire working paradigm before people with the needed talents
will be willing to get their feet wet. But by then won't it be way too late??
Best,
Jess Tauber
zylogy@aol.com
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