Ukraine-in-a-thread

[Gilrandir]

If no one minds, some information on Ukraine. A new interception has been made public (by the Russian facebook group "Cargo 200 from Ukraine to Russia"):
http://podrobnosti.ua/accidents/2014/10/29/1000430.html
In it a contracted regular of the Russian army (200 motorized rifle brigade of the Northern navy) is talking to his friend, a military retiree. The former has just returned from Ukraine where he had got in the humanitarian convoy. As he claims the white trucks transported both conscripts and contracted soldiers, but after heavy casualties which he estimates at 2000 the conscripts were withdrawn and replaced by mercenaries (psychos in the military slang). He himself says to have been at the hospital for quite a time after being wounded.

[Gilrandir]

However, it is their common interest NOT to have one of the largest European countries become a failed state.

On a second thought "a failed state" is a flawed concept. A number of states may have been termed that way at different difficult periods of their history: Kievan Rus in the late 14th century, Serbia in 1389, France in the 1420s, Poland in 1795, Austria in 1938, Baltic states in 1939, Byzantine empire in 1204, Russia in 1612, Russian empire in 1917, Ukraine in 1918-19.... Yet most of them went through vicissitudes and existed after it for some time or do now.

[Montmorency]

I thought it was history. Wait, you are/were TEACHING history, but STUDYING mathematics. Now it makes a perfect sense.


How do you know that Indo-European had few speakers? Their number must have been pretty large for them to have dispersed so far and wide from Portugal to India.
I realize that it was a gradual process yet they must have numbered some hundred thousands.

Which makes no sense if we think of a language from this perspective: why a small number of people should need such a complex language to communicate in the environment of close social ties and similar cognitive organization? I would say that there is a general tendency of effort-saving at work in communities of all sizes: humans tend to take no more effort than it is absolutely neccessary to express something. It was especially true of the times when the love of a language didn't prompt people to strive for excessive imbellishment of it not justified by sheer utility.

How do you know that modern languages are stable and they will not simplify in future? You are making assumptions seeing the synchronic state of a language here and now. Diachronically they may be changing but we can't detect it being ourselves within the same period of time. Just like we can judge of languages changing/stagnating only with a hindsight.

For IndoEuropeans, by the time of their wide-ranging migrations 7-6,000 years ago their language had likely already been undergoing the process of simplification since the beginning of the Neolithic. Prior to the migrations, we can imagine that the overall population size of their culture was no more than 100,000 at any point, perhaps much less.

It makes sense if you consider early languages to have come about through a hodge-podge of ad-hoc additions and accommodations based on semantic/cognitive ways of organizing the world for those pre-historic humans. To work an answer to Viking into this: consider that complexity of form and complexity of function correlate more-or-less inversely. In the modern world, say in the modern-English-speaking urban environment, world-knowledge and communicative requirements are orders of magnitude higher than for prehistoric societies. In other words: high complexity function, low complexity form. Meanwhile, the "kludgeocracy" of form-complex (i.e. the grammar and phonology in themselves, independent of any specific usage) pre-historic language would have served a socially-integrative role as well as being basically adequate for communication of low-complexity knowledge and information. Consider the difference between a modern person having to switch between social registers and dialects depending on context, trying to explain to their boss that their cousin was hurt in a car-crash and they have to visit them in the hospital because of insurance issues, and they won't be able to come to work today but can work overtime next week to make up for it, versus a tribal leader explaining to the children over the campfire how man was created from the earth by star-beings and yadda-yadda. The point is, in the societies I'm talking about there are relatively-few negative consequences to the high cost of complex form - because the functional usage of the form is comparatively simple compared to much of the modern world.

As for the future, I'm sure language will have a very different appearance. It will probably simplify, for sure, once governments realize that most syntax - even now - is not strictly necessary for communication, and will enforce policy to strip it down to utilitarian standards. This will also interact with the widespread direct modification of the human language faculty through genetic and neurophysiological manipulation in as-of-yet unknown ways.

[Viking]

consider that complexity of form and complexity of function correlate more-or-less inversely. In the modern world, say in the modern-English-speaking urban environment, world-knowledge and communicative requirements are orders of magnitude higher than for prehistoric societies. In other words: high complexity function, low complexity form. Meanwhile, the "kludgeocracy" of form-complex (i.e. the grammar and phonology in themselves, independent of any specific usage) pre-historic language would have served a socially-integrative role as well as being basically adequate for communication of low-complexity knowledge and information. Consider the difference between a modern person having to switch between social registers and dialects depending on context, trying to explain to their boss that their cousin was hurt in a car-crash and they have to visit them in the hospital because of insurance issues, and they won't be able to come to work today but can work overtime next week to make up for it, versus a tribal leader explaining to the children over the campfire how man was created from the earth by star-beings and yadda-yadda. The point is, in the societies I'm talking about there are relatively-few negative consequences to the high cost of complex form - because the functional usage of the form is comparatively simple compared to much of the modern world.

As for the future, I'm sure language will have a very different appearance. It will probably simplify, for sure, once governments realize that most syntax - even now - is not strictly necessary for communication, and will enforce policy to strip it down to utilitarian standards. This will also interact with the widespread direct modification of the human language faculty through genetic and neurophysiological manipulation in as-of-yet unknown ways.

This sounds more like something that is intrinsic to language itself rather than specific languages. It should translate effortlessly between different languages; just like you should be able to use any alphabet to write any language.

It could make specific cultures and specific social interaction more complex, but not specific languages.

[Kagemusha]

For IndoEuropeans, by the time of their wide-ranging migrations 7-6,000 years ago their language had likely already been undergoing the process of simplification since the beginning of the Neolithic. Prior to the migrations, we can imagine that the overall population size of their culture was no more than 100,000 at any point, perhaps much less.

It makes sense if you consider early languages to have come about through a hodge-podge of ad-hoc additions and accommodations based on semantic/cognitive ways of organizing the world for those pre-historic humans. To work an answer to Viking into this: consider that complexity of form and complexity of function correlate more-or-less inversely. In the modern world, say in the modern-English-speaking urban environment, world-knowledge and communicative requirements are orders of magnitude higher than for prehistoric societies. In other words: high complexity function, low complexity form. Meanwhile, the "kludgeocracy" of form-complex (i.e. the grammar and phonology in themselves, independent of any specific usage) pre-historic language would have served a socially-integrative role as well as being basically adequate for communication of low-complexity knowledge and information. Consider the difference between a modern person having to switch between social registers and dialects depending on context, trying to explain to their boss that their cousin was hurt in a car-crash and they have to visit them in the hospital because of insurance issues, and they won't be able to come to work today but can work overtime next week to make up for it, versus a tribal leader explaining to the children over the campfire how man was created from the earth by star-beings and yadda-yadda. The point is, in the societies I'm talking about there are relatively-few negative consequences to the high cost of complex form - because the functional usage of the form is comparatively simple compared to much of the modern world.

As for the future, I'm sure language will have a very different appearance. It will probably simplify, for sure, once governments realize that most syntax - even now - is not strictly necessary for communication, and will enforce policy to strip it down to utilitarian standards. This will also interact with the widespread direct modification of the human language faculty through genetic and neurophysiological manipulation in as-of-yet unknown ways.

Your entire hypothesis is based on flawed concept. There is no such thing as base Indo- European population. Language is about technology and culture not about genetics. Only changes in European genome are in elite and that does not have any real impact in genetic base of population. So your entire concept is flawed.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Your entire hypothesis is based on flawed concept. There is no such thing as base Indo- European population. Language is about technology and culture not about genetics. Only changes in European genome are in elite and that does not have any real impact in genetic base of population. So your entire concept is flawed.

You are not allowed to say that until AFTER he publishes this theory and receives his doctorate. THEN you critique him and give him a shot at tenure writing articles to disprove your critique...

[Montmorency]

It could make specific cultures and specific social interaction more complex, but not specific languages.

Hence the distinction between form and function. A very simple way of putting it is that if the energy-cost and time-cost of acquiring and using some formal feature is higher than for some other feature or variant of it, and that alternative has the same or larger functional domain or contribution to communication, then there is evolutionary pressure to exchange the former for the latter. However, change is mostly generated in children rather than adults, so without heavy language contact or language shift, this pressure may-well not be realized. Indeed, without extensive contact between peoples, there is also much less complexity to the ideas that need to be or can be gotten across.

An example of the evolutionary pressures in action would be in the case of the organization of morphosyntax around grammatical relations of "agent-patient", realized in an opposition between active and middle voice, but not necessarily passive. The ancestral Indo-Europeans had no grammatical framework for expressing passivized relations. Adopting the passive voice in a framework of "subject-object" with nominative syntax allowed for greater flexibility in describing the relations of nouns to each other. Meanwhile, the middle voice would be an unnecessary flourish - agent-patient relations can be put across without it just as well. In other words, to get an evolutionary advantage develop the passive and drop the middle. Now as we can see, the vast majority of world languages have the passive voice, but lack the middle voice.

But don't get me wrong - I love Classical Latin and Greek as much you all.



Kag, I don't follow your comment at all.

[HoreTore]

As Rutherford once said, sciences can be of two types: physics and stamp collecting. You definitely opted for the former while others (me including) for the latter.

Chemistry is the science of how to make stuff go boom.
Physics is the science of the boom itself.

You really don't need any more in life.

[Viking]

Hence the distinction between form and function. A very simple way of putting it is that if the energy-cost and time-cost of acquiring and using some formal feature is higher than for some other feature or variant of it, and that alternative has the same or larger functional domain or contribution to communication, then there is evolutionary pressure to exchange the former for the latter. However, change is mostly generated in children rather than adults, so without heavy language contact or language shift, this pressure may-well not be realized. Indeed, without extensive contact between peoples, there is also much less complexity to the ideas that need to be or can be gotten across.

An example of the evolutionary pressures in action would be in the case of the organization of morphosyntax around grammatical relations of "agent-patient", realized in an opposition between active and middle voice, but not necessarily passive. The ancestral Indo-Europeans had no grammatical framework for expressing passivized relations. Adopting the passive voice in a framework of "subject-object" with nominative syntax allowed for greater flexibility in describing the relations of nouns to each other. Meanwhile, the middle voice would be an unnecessary flourish - agent-patient relations can be put across without it just as well. In other words, to get an evolutionary advantage develop the passive and drop the middle. Now as we can see, the vast majority of world languages have the passive voice, but lack the middle voice.

But don't get me wrong - I love Classical Latin and Greek as much you all.

I still don't see how my specific method would yield English as one of the more complex languages.

[Montmorency]

Looking at written language only, complexity should be measurable by the size of a maximum compressed computer file from which it is possible to recreate most of the language as used on a daily basis.

1. What do you mean by "recreate"?

2. This is biased towards languages that use writing systems.

3. The sheer variety of use of written English, due to the number of disparate users in disparate contexts where English may be favored or preferred, as well as historical advantages accrued in style and lexicon in part because of literacy...


It might tell us something about the functional complexity of language usage, but it would give precisely no information in terms of form-complexity..

[Viking]

1. What do you mean by "recreate"?

From information contained by the file alone, it should be possible to recreate "every" sentence in the language with a 100% linguistic accuracy (herein correct inflection and sentence structure). No culture notes are included; i.e. 'orca' refers to the animal exclusively, not whether the culture sees it as holy, cute or scary.

2. This is biased towards languages that use writing systems.

The languages can be represented with the IPA, or something similar. It could be biased towards languages that have longer words, unless this is accounted for (although one could just as well argue that such languages actually gain complexity, or at least complicatedness, from such a feature).

3. The sheer variety of use of written English, due to the number of disparate users in disparate contexts where English may be favored or preferred, as well as historical advantages accrued in style and lexicon in part because of literacy...

Ignoring that you used the word written, it would be the most relevant to limit the sampling to any relatively coherent subunit of the language, such as specific dialects or written standards.

[Montmorency]

Ignoring that you used the word written

Yet you said:

Looking at written language only

'

From information contained by the file alone, it should be possible to recreate "every" sentence in the language with a 100% linguistic accuracy (herein correct inflection and sentence structure). No culture notes are included; i.e. 'orca' refers to the animal exclusively, not whether the culture sees it as holy, cute or scary.

But again, how does this represent grammatical complexity? What's to say it's not orthogonal to the issue entirely? Why exactly should it be presupposed that there will be any consistent relationship between complexity as independently measured and the size of such files? Also, depending on how you code the software to interpret whatever the input is, you could arbitrarily either create huge discrepancies between languages or bring them all to within a few bytes of each other.

I think that, at best, your proposal only indicates the limits of understanding. At worst, it provides a self-confirming yet logically-invalid measure that has no empirical relationship to what it purports to assess.

[Viking]

Yet you said:

Yes, in order to extend that particular argument, as it does not only pertain to written language.

But again, how does this represent grammatical complexity? What's to say it's not orthogonal to the issue entirely? Why exactly should it be presupposed that there will be any consistent relationship between complexity as independently measured and the size of such files? Also, depending on how you code the software to interpret whatever the input is, you could arbitrarily either create huge discrepancies between languages or bring them all to within a few bytes of each other.

The compression is presumed idealised; which would require an adaptive compression algorithm that operates differently from language to language.

If we do not record words but only rules; i.e. the skeleton of the language, I do not see what else extra file size should come from if not complexity.

A language with k+1 grammatical classes is more complex than one with k grammatical classes, and the information about this extra class must necessarily take more space.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

This has now become Chomsky v Saussure with Korzibinski as referee....

Thread is tired and needs a nap

[Gilrandir]

Chemistry is the science of how to make stuff go boom.
Physics is the science of the boom itself.

You really don't need any more in life.

Yet you need other sciences to earn you a living in this life.

[Gilrandir]

Consider the difference between a modern person having to switch between social registers and dialects depending on context, trying to explain to their boss that their cousin was hurt in a car-crash and they have to visit them in the hospital because of insurance issues, and they won't be able to come to work today but can work overtime next week to make up for it, versus a tribal leader explaining to the children over the campfire how man was created from the earth by star-beings and yadda-yadda.

Those Indo-Europeans of today go on insulting alien tribes by considering them primitive creatures with a primitive mindset and primitive problems to deal with. Indo-European insurance nazis are coming!

[Beskar]

The thread has gone terribly off-topic for a while so it is taking a nap. When any big news come along, feel free to make a new topic.