# new summary re language

**URL:** http://discourse.iapct.org/t/new-summary-re-language/14395
**Category:** CSG1993
**Created:** [March 11, 1993, 5:27pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/new-summary-re-language/14395 "1993-03-11T17:27:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/user_avatar/discourse.iapct.org/bnhpct/32/34_2.png) [@bnhpct](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/bnhpct)
#### Post date: [March 11, 1993, 5:27pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/new-summary-re-language/14395/1 "1993-03-11T17:27:38Z")

</div>

[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 93039 12:17:00, Thu 930311 12:08:14)]

In our discussions of language we have had the proposal (from  
Bill) that a word-perception be one of the inputs satisfying the  
input function for a category-level comparator.

To the extent that (most) words are to be identified with  
category perceptions, analysis of structure in discourses should  
tell us something about the organization of the category level.  
The advantage of this is that words and word dependencies are  
much easier to manage and analyze than nonverbal perceptions, and  
it is much easier to reach agreement about results. This is  
partly because words are by "design" public, and nonverbal  
perceptions are ineluctably private. I believe it is also  
because dependencies among words are much more well defined, but  
a comparison with the aim of demonstrating this is virtually  
impossible so long as we have only the words with which the  
nonverbal perceptions are associated as our means for reaching  
agreement about those nonverbal perceptions. To me, that very  
limitation is a pretty convincing demonstration in itself.

In what follows, I will rely much on a notion of dependency  
between words. The saying of one word ("jump") is dependent upon  
the saying of one or more other words in the same utterance  
("child" or "fish", for example). I will clarify this notion  
presently, after some preliminary definitions. (The first  
indented paragraph within square braces, below.)

Analysis of an utterance yields a structure of dependencies among  
the particular words in it.

Words are classified according to these dependencies across many  
(by predictive claim, all) utterances of a language.

Def: Operator words (operators) are words the saying of which is  
&nbsp;&nbsp;dependent upon the saying of other words. Symbol: O.

Def: The words upon which an operator depends in a given  
&nbsp;&nbsp;utterance are (in) its argument, or are its argument words  
&nbsp;&nbsp;(arguments).

Def: Words with no such dependency are primitive arguments --  
&nbsp;&nbsp;mostly what we think of as concrete nouns. Symbol: N.

Operators are further classified according to the above  
dependency classes of words in their argument. All that is  
needed is this simple dependency on dependency. Thus, On depends  
on one N (jump), Ono depends on one N and one O in that order  
(believe), Oon on the same argument word classes in the reverse  
order (surprise), and so on.

In addition to the operator and argument words, there are other  
morphemes that correlate with no category perception, but rather  
help to identify the dependency relations, morphemes like `-ing',  
`to' of the infinitive, `that' in e.g. `I think that you  
understand me'.

Words may be present in zero form if their presence is so  
strongly expectable in a given position relative to other words  
in the utterance that they need not actually be said in that  
position: John plays piano and Mary [plays] violin. Or  
expectable words may be given reduced form (e.g. pronouns).

&nbsp;&nbsp;[What is meant by dependency can be seen intuitively in  
&nbsp;&nbsp;perceptual terms. Perceptions that I imagine in association  
&nbsp;&nbsp;with the On operator "jump" necessarily involve something or  
&nbsp;&nbsp;someone (indicated by some word of class N) jumping.  
&nbsp;&nbsp;Perceptions that I imagine in association with "child" do not  
&nbsp;&nbsp;entail anything in particular about the child that I  
&nbsp;&nbsp;imagine--no word of some O subclass is required. However, the  
&nbsp;&nbsp;notion of dependency used here has its basis in the occurrence  
&nbsp;&nbsp;or occurrability of words in utterances. It may be that the  
&nbsp;&nbsp;latter reflects merely the former, but the privileges of  
&nbsp;&nbsp;occurrence of words are enormously easier to manage and analyze  
&nbsp;&nbsp;(in a way that enables agreement among investigators) than  
&nbsp;&nbsp;those of perceptions. Furthermore, it is not clear the extent  
&nbsp;&nbsp;to which words and discourses, and agreements reached and  
&nbsp;&nbsp;communicated by means of them, may determine which perceptual  
&nbsp;&nbsp;inputs humans pass along for higher-level perceptual control,  
&nbsp;&nbsp;which they supply by imagination, and which they ignore, and it  
&nbsp;&nbsp;seems wise not to beg the question.]

Given these preliminaries, I will summarize proposals I made in  
1969-1970 (in my MA thesis at Penn).

At the first stage of analysis, the words in utterances are in  
linear sequence (some of them perhaps having their phonemic  
content reduced, even to zero, as noted).

a child  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;jumped  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\> over  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a book

A child jumped over a book. This is reduced from A child jumped;  
said jumping is over a book. The past tense is reduced from A  
child jumps; said jumping is before my saying this. I'll ignore  
these reductions for now. It's easier to draw the dependency  
graph at the next stage of analysis, undoing the linearization  
step of producing sentences.

At a further stage of analysis, the words/category perceptions  
are not in a particular linear order. (Alternative  
linearizations as sentences are possible.)

&nbsp;&nbsp;[Where (the saying of) an operator word is dependent upon (the  
&nbsp;&nbsp;saying of) two or more argument words, it is convenient for us  
&nbsp;&nbsp;to speak of the argument words as the first argument, second  
&nbsp;&nbsp;argument, etc., based upon the linearization felt to be most  
&nbsp;&nbsp;basic or most common, but the means for identifying and  
&nbsp;&nbsp;differentiating the words required in the argument of a given  
&nbsp;&nbsp;operator must be in other than sequential terms. I don't have  
&nbsp;&nbsp;a proposal at hand. Case grammar is an obvious candidate, but  
&nbsp;&nbsp;gets notoriously messy and fraught with disagreements between  
&nbsp;&nbsp;investigators. The simplest solution is to use the most basic  
&nbsp;&nbsp;or prevalent linear order as means for distinguishing multiple  
&nbsp;&nbsp;arguments prior to the linearization step. This runs into  
&nbsp;&nbsp;problems as dependencies in discourse pile up, and even in a  
&nbsp;&nbsp;single sentence such as the present example.]

child \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\ / \> over  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;jump ---\ book  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\ \  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\ \> before  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\ /  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;say  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I

Where at the earlier stage we often had repetitions of a word,  
where the word-occurrences were identified as "the same" (and  
often one occurrence was reduced to zero on that account), at  
this stage we may be able to have a single word/category  
perception signal satisfy the argument requirement under both  
operators (for both occurrences).

Q: do we postulate any mechanism in PCT with the plasticity  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;required for this?

We no longer have a dependency tree for each sentence (a  
rooted, directed, oriented graph with a single root, one or a few  
branches at each node, and primitive argument words at the  
leaves). For sentences with modifiers or conjunctions we have  
something like a semilattice structure.

Continuing further with the analysis, we reach a mesh-like  
structure for a discourse. Central, topical, or thematic words  
have more dependencies than other words/categories occurring in  
the discourse.

Discourses in the same subject-matter domain use the same  
vocabulary, and they use it in the same way. Put in other terms,  
the "same" word may satisfy the input of different category  
perceptions, depending upon the subject-matter domain of the  
discourse and other perceptual context in which it occurs.  
"Wear" means one thing to a tailor and another to a sailor (in  
context of their respective specializations). One aspect of this  
is seen in the classifier vocabulary for a given domain. To take  
an example from work done over the past 20 years, in a physiology  
domain, "heart" is classified as a "body part". In a  
pharmacology domain, "heart" is not a primitive term but occurs  
only in phrases, and it is these phrases which are then treated  
as primitives for the domain and classified, as for example, "the  
beating of the heart" is classified as a "symptom". (In this  
way, a study of these matters can disclose, in the structures of  
linguistic information found in subfield discourses, a basis for  
logical precedence and other relations among different scientific  
subfields.)

One subject-matter domain may be distinguished from another by  
shared vocabulary across utterances in the subject matter, where  
the words satisfy classifier vocabulary for the domain, in a  
relatively small number of dependency relations specifyable among  
the classifier words. The shared vocabulary, recurrent  
dependencies, and the classifier vocabulary appear in the mesh of  
word dependencies in memory on the basis of discourses previously  
encountered. (Again: for "word dependencies" read perceptions of  
dependencies between words and between associated category  
perceptions.)

An example of classifier terminology for a domain:

"Mail should not be thought of as an application, it's an  
&nbsp;&nbsp;enabling technology." --Eugene Lee, director of product  
&nbsp;&nbsp;planning for Email software vendor Beyond, quoted in Byte,  
&nbsp;&nbsp;3/93:90.)

Some software packages are called applications. Some things  
(including but not limited to software packages) are called  
enabling technologies. Perceptions associated with the software  
packages called applications, especially those generalizable from  
the set of them with which a person is familiar, come to be  
treated as expectations about some new thing called an  
application. Similarly with the different perceptions associated  
with things called enabling technologies and generalizable from  
the known set of them. Mr. Lee tells us we ought to have the  
latter expectations of electronic mail, rather than the former.  
(Um--give us some examples of enabling technologies, please?)

Word dependencies are clearly also dependencies between category  
perceptions. I talk about them in terms of word relations  
because the words are for us a principal way of getting at the  
categories; and ex hypotheosi the two are equivalent for our  
purposes (see ref to Bill's proposal, above).

Now, if I have encountered a given operator-argument dependency  
o-a in a conversation or text, I have a basis in memory for  
finding that dependency acceptable in subsequent discourse. (I  
might have a basis in memory of nonverbal perceptual input for  
expecting the dependency between category perceptions associated  
with o and a respectively. Or I might not--I might only have  
imagined perceptual signals generalized from various experiences  
categorized as o and as a in the past, perhaps only vaguely, just  
enough to "make sense" of the utterance. I might have only a  
fuzzy notion of what an "enabling technology" is, or of what  
email is.) If o satisfies classifier word O and a satisfies  
classifier word A in the given subject-matter domain (in the mesh  
of word dependencies [perceptions of dependencies between words  
and between associated category perceptions] in memory on the  
basis of prior discourses), and if I have encountered other  
satisfiers of O and A (or even O and A themselves) in the given  
dependency relation, then I have a strong expectation that some  
(to me) novel o-a dependency is also acceptable.

A lot of learning a subject matter is learning of its classifier  
vocabulary. As mentioned, relatively few dependencies among  
classifier words recur with great regularity in discourses of a  
given domain. (Harris et al. \_The Form of Information in  
Science\_, Naomi Sager, \_Natural Language Processing\_). For nautical  
discourse, we might find the following sorts of dependencies  
(among others):

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;VESSEL MANEUVERS IN DIRECTION

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ketch wears away around starboard tack  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;yawl bends to port  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;schooner comes about into the wind

On this basis, we would find acceptable something like "the  
schooner wore away to port", but "the starboard wore away around  
the yawl" is absolutely unacceptable -- nonsensical -- nautical  
usage. (Though a person ignorant of domain norms might well find  
this perfectly sayable and perfectly understandable -- say, the  
starbord side of the yawl rubbed against the pier during winter  
storage, and was eroded away, around the curve of the vessel on  
that side.) Similarly, "the [rubbing of the] rope wore away the  
paint" is acceptable not as specifically nautical usage but on  
the basis of dependencies in a more basic subject matter, perhaps  
mechanics, even though it may occur embedded in a nautical  
discussion.

As we learn the word dependencies for a domain, we learn to match  
our nonverbal perceptions to the mesh of dependencies remembered  
from prior discourse. We must do so for the words to "make  
sense". It is also true, though perhaps not so obvious, that we  
must do so for the nonverbal perceptions to "make sense", in  
particular for them to make the same sense to us as they do to  
those with whom we seek to cooperate and from whom we seek to  
learn. We must replace imagined perception with memory of actual  
perception, and so we become experienced and expert in the  
domain. But while learning (and perhaps while supposedly expert)  
we may prefer imagined perceptions that match domain norms shared  
with others over actual but discrepant perceptions, if control  
for the perception of agreement and cooperation has higher gain  
than control for discrepancies between imagined perception and  
actual perception, however that is managed.

And now once more beyond the pale: in learning to be people with  
those around us we learn to discount and ignore some perceptions,  
or to cover or reinterpret them with the aid of imagined  
perceptions. This is what has happened with socalled "psychic"  
perceptions, which have for many centuries been the occasion of  
painful and shameful death, and which apparently not all people  
access equally (variability analogous to color blindness).

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bruce Nevin  
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[bn@bbn.com](mailto:bn@bbn.com)