agency in language

CSGnet Archive CSG2019
1

[From Bruce Nevin (20190821.11:17 ET)]

Some languages in the world use a completely different set of pronouns to distinguish whether the effects indicated by the verb in a sentence is intended or is experienced irrespective of intent. This is a relatively common feature of languages in North America, including the language that is my particular concern, Achumawi. Sometimes it’s a prefix or suffix other than a pronoun, or even a different verb stem.

In English, we have to resort to a circumlocution for this, “accidentally”, “unintentionally”, or the like.Â

It is interesting, too, that across the board the ‘by control’ (agent) forms are the default and the ‘undergone’ or ‘affected’ (patient) forms are elective, and in cases where either may be used the latter emphasize the distinction.

My awareness of this has sharpened after reading

Mithun,
Marianne. 2008b The emergence of agentive systems in
core argument marking. The typology of semantic alignment
systems. Mark Donohue and Søren Wichmann, eds. Oxford University
Press. 297–333.>

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qew4a4ggt5cc5v8/Mithun%202008_Emergence_of_Agentive_Systems.pdf?dl=0

It seems to me obvious why people would want to communicate clearly whether something is intentional or not. Mithun’s paper shows evidence that this feature has spread from languages to which it is ‘native’, so to speak, to neighboring languages with which they have no historical roots in common, in geographical areas (NW US and Canada, SW US, northern California, etc.) where trade and intermarriage is common. The spread has usually been by reinterpretation of existing morphology, sometimes by borrowing of particular pronouns or affixes.

···

Contravening this tendency in languages–and make of this what you will–the stylistic norms of science writing notoriously hide agency by using the passive (“factors x, y, and z were found to have contributed to …”) and chains of nominalizations, abstract words derived from verbs ("…reductive effects of coagulation products of the reaction"). The latter words are abstract because the subjects and objects of the underlying verbs (reduce, affect, coagulate, produce, react) have been stripped away. This style is thought to be more ‘objective’, as if being obtuse could actually prevent one from having a thumb on the scale. But such are social conventions. I just followed the convention, saying “is thought”.

2

[Rick Marken 2019-08-22_09:08:06]

[From Bruce Nevin (20190821.11:17 ET)]

BN: Some languages in the world use a completely different set of pronouns to distinguish whether the effects indicated by the verb in a sentence is intended or is experienced irrespective of intent…

Â

BN: In English, we have to resort to a circumlocution for this, “accidentally”, “unintentionally”, or the like.

RM: Seems pretty straight forward to me. Though I admit that the pronoun thing sounds pretty elegant.

Â

BN: It is interesting, too, that across the board the ‘by control’ (agent) forms are the default and the ‘undergone’ or ‘affected’ (patient) forms are elective, and in cases where either may be used the latter emphasize the distinction.

RM: Yes, it’s amazing that people have known for millennia what scientific psychologists didn’t know until 1960 (when Bill published his first paper): that behavior is purposeful (it’s intentional) but sometimes it’s not (it’s accidental).

Â

BN: It seems to me obvious why people would want to communicate clearly whether something is intentional or not. Mithun’s paper shows evidence that this feature has spread from languages to which it is ‘native’, so to speak, to neighboring languages …

RM: I presume what you mean here is that the “pronoun” approach to differentiating reference to intentional versus accidental behaviors is what spread to neighboring languages, not the differentiating between intentional and accidental behavior itself. If people weren’t already perceiving the difference between intentional and accidental behavior I don’t believe they could talk about it in any manner, using words like accidental/intentional or the pronoun method.Â

BN: Contravening this tendency in languages–and make of this what you will–the stylistic norms of science writing notoriously hide agency by using the passive (“factors x, y, and z were found to have contributed to …”) and chains of nominalizations, abstract words derived from verbs (“…reductive effects of coagulation products of the reaction”). The latter words are abstract because the subjects and objects of the underlying verbs (reduce, affect, coagulate, produce, react) have been stripped away. This style is thought to be more ‘objective’, as if being obtuse could actually prevent one from having a thumb on the scale. But such are social conventions. I just followed the convention, saying “is thought”.

RM: I think the world is lightening up on this. Even the WORD grammar check wants you to avoid the passive voice. I personally favor the royal “we” when talking about stuff I’ve done;-)

BestÂ

Rick

···

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

3

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-08-26_10:18:56 UTC]

Isn’t it rather so that, in archaic times and often today we understood many things happening intentionally when they were not: animism, wind blows, stones want to fall and clouds want
to fly etc. This was the Aristotelian way of thought. Then the modern scientific critics of Aristotelianism went to another extreme: nothing were ever intentional. Well, most ordinary people have understood all the time that sometimes some substances act intentionally
and sometimes not and some substances never. But the hard problem is to tell when and which.

I think that this is so, but I do not want that others think that it is just my imagination and that is why I may use a passive voice and say that things seem to be so (for anyone).

Eetu

···

[Rick Marken 2019-08-22_09:08:06]

[From Bruce Nevin (20190821.11:17 ET)]

BN: Some languages in the world use a completely different set of pronouns to distinguish whether the effects indicated by the verb in a sentence is intended
or is experienced irrespective of intent…

BN: In English, we have to resort to a circumlocution for this, “accidentally”, “unintentionally”, or the like.

RM: Seems pretty straight forward to me. Though I admit that the pronoun thing sounds pretty elegant.

BN: It is interesting, too, that across the board the ‘by control’ (agent) forms are the default and the ‘undergone’ or ‘affected’ (patient) forms are
elective, and in cases where either may be used the latter emphasize the distinction.

RM: Yes, it’s amazing that people have known for millennia what scientific psychologists didn’t know until 1960 (when Bill published his first paper): that behavior is purposeful (it’s intentional) but sometimes
it’s not (it’s accidental).

BN: It seems to me obvious why people would want to communicate clearly whether something is intentional or not. Mithun’s paper shows evidence that this
feature has spread from languages to which it is ‘native’, so to speak, to neighboring languages …

RM: I presume what you mean here is that the “pronoun” approach to differentiating reference to intentional versus accidental behaviors is what spread to neighboring languages, not the differentiating between
intentional and accidental behavior itself. If people weren’t already perceiving the difference between intentional and accidental behavior I don’t believe they could talk about it in any manner, using words like accidental/intentional or the pronoun method.

BN: Contravening this tendency in languages–and make of this what you will–the stylistic norms of science writing notoriously hide agency by using the
passive (“factors x, y, and z were found to have contributed to …”) and chains of nominalizations, abstract words derived from verbs (“…reductive effects of coagulation products of the reaction”). The latter words are abstract because the subjects and
objects of the underlying verbs (reduce, affect, coagulate, produce, react) have been stripped away. This style is thought to be more ‘objective’, as if being obtuse could actually prevent one from having a thumb on the scale. But such are social conventions.
I just followed the convention, saying “is thought”.

RM: I think the world is lightening up on this. Even the WORD grammar check wants you to avoid the passive voice. I personally favor the royal “we” when talking about stuff I’ve done;-)

Best

Rick

–

Richard S. Marken

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you

have nothing left to take away.�

                            --Antoine de Saint-Exupery
4

[Rick Marken 2019-08-26_15:57:27]

[From Bruce Nevin (20190823.10:00 ET)]

BN: When we control a perception of another’s purpose, is that perception imaginary?

 RM: I can’t think of a situation where one controls a perception of another person’s purpose. But If they do, the perception isn’t imaginary of they are controlling so aspect of the physical world. Imaginary perceptions are self generated; they are not based on external reality.

RM: Maybe what you mean is “are perceptions of purpose valid”. That is, when we perceive a behavior as purposeful is the behavior itself actually purposeful. And I would say that the validity level is probably 90% correct. Unless you are using the test for the controlled variable, in which case the validity is 100%

RM: By the way, a classic demonstration of perceiving purpose in non-purposive behavior is the Heider-Simmel study, where they showed that people see purpose in the behavior of what I’m sure the subjects knew were non-purposeful animations:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FIEZXMUM2I

RM: So we can perceive purpose in behavior even when we know that the systems producing the behavior are not purposeful.

Best

Rick

···

Are there degrees of imagined-ness, on a scale from a completely imaginary ‘projection’ to a perception of a reference value that is fully derived from perceptual input from the environment? The latter would be a perception confirmed by the Test for Controlled Variables. Not knowing about the latter, ‘scientific psychologists’ rejected the former.

BN: It seems to me obvious why people would want to communicate clearly whether something is intentional or not. Mithun’s paper shows evidence that this feature has spread from languages to which it is ‘native’, so to speak, to neighboring languages …

RM: I presume what you mean here is that the “pronoun” approach to differentiating reference to intentional versus accidental behaviors is what spread to neighboring languages, not the differentiating between intentional and accidental behavior itself. If people weren’t already perceiving the difference between intentional and accidental behavior I don’t believe they could talk about it in any manner, using words like accidental/intentional or the pronoun method.Â

This touches on the famous and fraught Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. My understanding is that a given language facilitates or even requires routine communication of some things (e.g. gender in English, agent/patient in these languages) and relegates other things (which are elsewhere obligatory) to more or less ad hoc circumlocution resorted to only if you really care about it (gender in Achumawi, agent/patient in English). Languages dictate some perceptions that we must communicate, and channel our attention to some perceptions that it is easy and routine to communicate, and they channel our attention away from some perceptions that are routine or obligatory for speakers of other languages to talk about; but nevertheless in any language it is possible to talk about anything for which you have (or can mutually agree upon) vocabulary, metaphors, etc. How congruent the communicators’ perceptions may be, based upon that communication, is a function of collective control of those perceptions as well as of the functionally pertinent utterances.

/Bruce

On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 12:10 PM Richard Marken csgnet@lists.illinois.edu wrote:

[Rick Marken 2019-08-22_09:08:06]

[From Bruce Nevin (20190821.11:17 ET)]

BN: Some languages in the world use a completely different set of pronouns to distinguish whether the effects indicated by the verb in a sentence is intended or is experienced irrespective of intent…

Â

BN: In English, we have to resort to a circumlocution for this, “accidentally”, “unintentionally”, or the like.

RM: Seems pretty straight forward to me. Though I admit that the pronoun thing sounds pretty elegant.

Â

BN: It is interesting, too, that across the board the ‘by control’ (agent) forms are the default and the ‘undergone’ or ‘affected’ (patient) forms are elective, and in cases where either may be used the latter emphasize the distinction.

RM: Yes, it’s amazing that people have known for millennia what scientific psychologists didn’t know until 1960 (when Bill published his first paper): that behavior is purposeful (it’s intentional) but sometimes it’s not (it’s accidental).

Â

BN: It seems to me obvious why people would want to communicate clearly whether something is intentional or not. Mithun’s paper shows evidence that this feature has spread from languages to which it is ‘native’, so to speak, to neighboring languages …

RM: I presume what you mean here is that the “pronoun” approach to differentiating reference to intentional versus accidental behaviors is what spread to neighboring languages, not the differentiating between intentional and accidental behavior itself. If people weren’t already perceiving the difference between intentional and accidental behavior I don’t believe they could talk about it in any manner, using words like accidental/intentional or the pronoun method.Â

BN: Contravening this tendency in languages–and make of this what you will–the stylistic norms of science writing notoriously hide agency by using the passive (“factors x, y, and z were found to have contributed to …”) and chains of nominalizations, abstract words derived from verbs (“…reductive effects of coagulation products of the reaction”). The latter words are abstract because the subjects and objects of the underlying verbs (reduce, affect, coagulate, produce, react) have been stripped away. This style is thought to be more ‘objective’, as if being obtuse could actually prevent one from having a thumb on the scale. But such are social conventions. I just followed the convention, saying “is thought”.

RM: I think the world is lightening up on this. Even the WORD grammar check wants you to avoid the passive voice. I personally favor the royal “we” when talking about stuff I’ve done;-)

BestÂ

Rick

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

–
Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

5

[Rick Marken 2019-08-26_16:50:08]

[Eetu Pikkarainen 2019-08-26_10:18:56 UTC]

Â

EP: Isn’t it rather so that, in archaic times and often today we understood many things happening intentionally when they were not: animism, wind blows, stones want to fall and clouds want
to fly etc. This was the Aristotelian way of thought. Then the modern scientific critics of Aristotelianism went to another extreme: nothing were ever intentional. Well, most ordinary people have understood all the time that sometimes some substances act intentionally
and sometimes not and some substances never. But the hard problem is to tell when and which.

RM: I agree completely. Indeed, I believe PCT is the solution to precisely this problem: it provides a way of telling which behavior is purposeful (the behavior of control systems) and which is not (the behavior of causal systems). I actually have a paper that makes this argument, reprinted in my book “Doing Research on Purpose”, called “Making
Inferences about Intention: Perceptual Control Theory
as a ‘Theory of Mind’ for Psychologists”. I’ve attached it in case you don’t have a copy of the book. And my talk in Manchester will be on the same topic, really. So I look forward to meeting you there.Â

BestÂ

Rick

Â

ToM Marken.pdf (1.97 MB)

···

Richard S. MarkenÂ

"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery