Linguistic facts

[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 930316 09:04:52)]

[ Bill Powers (930315.1300) ] --

The kind of prediction you challenge me to make is a prediction
about how reference perceptions are acquired, and which specific
remembered perceptions will be made to constitute references for
control. I think you must agree that that sort of prediction is
subject to rather different standards than the more familiar kind
of PCT modelling prediction, namely, given reference perception r
(and gain g), a control system will control its perceptual input
i to approximate r within a tolerance corresponding to g.

I did make a prediction, which it is perhaps just as well you
ignored, because it was intemperate; there will of course always
be exceptions, if only because of organic deficiency of
perception or neurological function in some individuals.

Perhaps you will reconsider what you have written, given this
clarification of our universe of discourse.

I know that you are interested in extending the modelling
enterprise, from the modelling of control w.r.t. a given
reference perception, to modelling the establishment of reference
perceptions. You have been working on this in terms of
reorganization.

I am saying that many reference perceptions, including surely
those for language, are established not by random reorganization
but by imitation of other individuals with whom one (primarily,
but not exclusively, as a child) has much interaction that
matters, and by a process thereby of instituting social norms in
one's private reference perceptions.

I think you are vitally interested in these processes--backing
off a bit, I think these processes are of vital interest for HPCT
--because perceptions from the hypothesized category level on up
depend strongly on language. Without an account of language in
HPCT, the higher levels postulated for the hierarchy are
hypothetical constructs with little more empirical basis than
Freud's superego and id, or Eric Berne's TA constructs. The only
evidence for them is the pragmatic observation that they are
useful for organizing activities like teaching, therapy, and
management in organizations, and the esthetic observation that
they are a logical extension of constructs successfully modelled
at the lowest levels of the hierarchy.

This is not a criticism of PCT. It is a science that is still in
its infancy, as you and others have often said. On the contrary,
I am urging how we must proceed if we are to progress.

I will omit detailed responses to your comments on Labov's work,
what constitute useful data, etc. I believe, as I said, that you
would say things quite differently given the distinction between
the two kinds of prediction noted at the outset.

There are epistemological and ontological difficulties, to be
sure, that arise in any attempt to reify `a language' or `a
dialect' on the basis of generalizations over the speech of
individuals. The appropriate approach would be I think as I have
indicated, in terms of how individuals establish reference
perceptions that they perceive as being socially standardized.
The perception that another person's outputs deviate from one's
own reference perceptions of the "same" outputs then constitutes
a perception that the person is not a member of the familiar
group of people perceived as sharing the same references as
social norms. The perception of one's own group then becomes
possible on the basis of the alienness of these others. This is
the social function of prejudice, establishing a perception of
whom (what kind of people) one may rely on most for cooperation,
or most easily, with least preliminary negotiation of assumptions
and expectations.

The usefulness of Labov's results for us is not as a basis for
prediction that a social group in some way controls the behavior
of individuals in it (the prediction that you seem to be
demanding of me), but rather to show that there is a social
reality that we must account for. I happen to believe that
entities like "a language" and "a dialect" and "a social group"
are byproducts of individuals controlling for cooperation with
those with whom they have interactions that matter to them.
There is feedback here, in the sense that people tend to restrict
interactions that matter to them to people whom they perceive
they can trust and can work with easily. I believe I have just
sketched the principal basis for that perception. And people do
come to have a perception of "our language" or "our dialect" or
"our way of talking" as opposed to foreign ways, in a way exactly
parallel to that sketched above in connection with the social
function of prejudice. That hypostasis of social realities in
individual's perceptions is not a statistical fiction, it is a
perception as real as any other.

        Bruce
        bn@bbn.com