[From Bruce Nevin (2003.03.01 19:11 EST)]
Rick Marken (2003.01.03.1100)
I know that you’re joking but I think control
of language is a very interesting topic. Obviously, people control
language incredibly well. If they didn’t, cooperative accomplishment of
very complex goals (such as building computer chips and formulating
models of human behavior) would be virtually impossible.
The serious side of my quip
Bruce Nevin (2003.03.01 12:51 EST)
Seems like language is out of control. ;->
… hinges on the distinction between language and the use of language.
This may be familiar as de Saussure’s distinction between langue
and parole, and is somewhat parallel to Chomsky’s distinction
between competence and performance.
Viewed naturalistically, language is an emergent phenomenon with a
mathematically specifiable structure. In detail it varies across
communities of use and changes through time. It existed before you were
born, you learned it, and it will exist after you have died. But it can
exist only in its use, or in records of its use. What this
self-organizing system “emerges” from is its use by thee and me
and all the rest of us concurrently. It varies and changes pretty much
regardless of my personal preferences, or yours, or Bill’s. We know in
principle that we exert an influence, but with rare and maybe illusory
exceptions not enough to see or hear and say “I did that, I caused
that characteristic of English”. There’s no way I could prevent
“funner” from becoming current usage or to forestall talk of
“emails”. I cannot by myself cause change to norms (of
usage, of pronunciation, etc.)
One way to put this is as an instance of the dictum that you can’t
reliably control the behavior of another person, compounded to the
behavior of many other people. Neither Bill nor I can control whether
people use the phrase “controlling for”, so whether or not it
becomes or remains a norm here is “out of control” - although
nevertheless it is emergent from the control of perceptions that each of
us does by talking and writing.
So much for what I was saying. Now, on to what you were saying, which I
expect is of considerably more interest to you.
I think we use language to evoke imagery in
others that corresponds to the imagery in our own minds. But it’s often
hard to tell how well we are doing at this “evoking the same
imagery” business since, of course, we can’t perceive what another
person is imagining. Perhaps the best way to tell if there is a
correspondence between what we are imagining and what image our words
have evoked in others is to see whether the person we address can reply
with new language that evokes in ourselves the imagery we hoped to evoke
in that person.
The best test I know of understanding is paraphrase. (But this isn’t new
“language” in the above sense. That would be translation.)
Bruce Gregory did this extremely well with
“controlling” and “controlling for”. His use of the
example of a baseball pitcher to illustrate the difference between
“controlling” and “controlling for” indicates that
the mental images evoked in him by these two phrases is exactly the same
as those evoked in me.
His words evoked in you some perception which was also evoked in you by
the words of Bill Powers (2003.01.01.1232 MST) to which he was
replying:
“Controlling” is used when you are
successfully holding
something in a reference state. Controlling for a reference state
explains what you’re doing by saying what the intended outcome is,
but
without claiming success, yet. A bowler can say "I’m controlling for
a
perfect game," a golfer "I’m controlling today just for getting
all my
drives in the fairway." So “I’m controlling for X” means
"My goal is to
achieve X, and that explains my actions even when I don’t
succeed."
In terms of imagery, a bowler, a golfer, and a baseball pitcher
look rather different. What they have in common is either an
abstraction or a generalization.
I make what seems to me to be the same distinction using the words
“controlling successfully” and “controlling with
error”. An archer can say “I’m controlling my arrow hitting the
center of the target, but not very well yet. At least most of them are
landing on the target today!” or “I’m controlling my arrow
hitting the center of the target, but they’re going consistently to the
left. I must be plucking the string.” This seems to me to evoke the
same sort of perception as the above. Perhaps this is not the case for
you?
This perception can be described in words as a sequence of skilled
release, ballistic path, and approximation to an intended location, where
skill is increased by iterative practice. (Well, the path of a bowling
ball isn’t ballistic, but it’s subject only to laws of physics and
independent of any further activities of the bowler.)
Control is exercised in the momentary actions of the release (bowling
form, golf swing, baseball throw, draw and release of the bow), after
which you wait for the results. But what is relevant here is control
exercised through iterative refinement of the fine detail of the launch
and release, building skill and consistency. Does this mean that
“controlling for” is limited to iterative honing of skill, or
to activities involving such skill? If not, then perhaps some different
examples are needed to communicate all of the intended
meaning.
So in this case, Bruce G. demonstrated
excellent control of language inasmuch as he was able to communicate his
intended meaning, which precisely corresponded to the meaning I would
have been controlling for had I used the terms “controlling”
and “controlling for”.
I agree that paraphrase is a good test, one of the best we have, but it
is not absolute proof that you are having the same perception (whatever
that means).
/Bruce
Nevin
···
At 10:54 AM 1/3/2003, Richard Marken wrote: