4 ms·

I'm not a linguist and haven't done much machine learning, so forgive my naïveté, but aren't there a couple of core features/structures all languages have? That

I'm not a linguist and haven't done much machine learning, so forgive my naïveté, but aren't there a couple of core features/structures all languages have? That might not be enough to learn anything/might be what you're saying, but I wonder if there's a way to determine what a plausible grammar is and to try to identify what the nouns are. One you have the nouns, you could try just doing a huge substitution game on different texts in that language and try to see what guesses make the most sense for the most sentences.

labster 5y ago
I’m not an electrical engineer, but aren’t there a couple of core features that all electricity has, like ohms law? Surely we can figure out how an undocumented old computer functioned from a couple of electronic components, if we identify which parts are the resistors and which are the transistors.
jcranmer 5y ago
> aren't there a couple of core features/structures all languages have? The answer is 'no', especially in the sense that there's a relatively finite set of possible grammars that a putative natural language could be compared against. In terms of basic parts of speech, I believe that every language does have something that you can describe as a noun, but that's more or less the only "universal" part of speech (there are some languages that essentially don't have verbs--you "do a look" rather than "see", e.g.). The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study, and I don't know how well the written corpus is at actually reflecting problems like segmenting text into words or morphemes. In essence, the available evidence is so paltry that you could justify just about any grammatical hypothesis, I suspect. If I'm understanding Chomskyian linguistics correctly (that's a really big if), there was originally thought to be an inherent "language organ" that strongly controlled grammar. But over time, and as linguistics documented more languages, the things that are universal in grammars in this subdiscipline has essentially been reduced to 'merge', which is an abstract concept that I'm pretty sure I don't understand.
- catlifeonmars 5y ago
  > The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study This is probably a silly question: but if there the corpus is so small, why are we convinced that it has any meaning at all?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  "There was originally thought" meaning "Chomsky thought". But it was all obvious bollocks, contrary to elementary natural selection. Grammars necessarily have to be compatible with brain organization inherited from our primate ancestors, who obviously could have had no "language organ" carried about waiting to find some sort of use by their future descendants. Brain structures all need to be immediately useful for surviving or reproducing. One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail, not necessarily of any survival value, originally, but needed to impress a potential mate. It could have been used to carry a tune. Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies. The two are not incompatible.
  - catlifeonmars 5y ago
    > One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail > Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies. Sources? ——- Separately, is language unique to humans? Are there examples of convergent evolution (semblances of grammatical structure) that can give us more clues as to how language may have evolved in humans?
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Grammatical language, e.g. with subclauses, does appear from evidence thus far to be unique to humans, although whalesong is complex enough that it might yet be found there. I gather that, since the "universal grammatical structure" was promoted, languages have been discovered that are said to lack any such forms. "Said to", because very few people are reporting on them. Sorry, for sources I would be doing the same DDGing you will.
deleted 5y ago
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labster 5y ago

I’m not an electrical engineer, but aren’t there a couple of core features that all electricity has, like ohms law? Surely we can figure out how an undocumented old computer functioned from a couple of electronic components, if we identify which parts are the resistors and which are the transistors.

jcranmer 5y ago

> aren't there a couple of core features/structures all languages have? The answer is 'no', especially in the sense that there's a relatively finite set of possible grammars that a putative natural language could be compared against. In terms of basic parts of speech, I believe that every language does have something that you can describe as a noun, but that's more or less the only "universal" part of speech (there are some languages that essentially don't have verbs--you "do a look" rather than "see", e.g.). The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study, and I don't know how well the written corpus is at actually reflecting problems like segmenting text into words or morphemes. In essence, the available evidence is so paltry that you could justify just about any grammatical hypothesis, I suspect. If I'm understanding Chomskyian linguistics correctly (that's a really big if), there was originally thought to be an inherent "language organ" that strongly controlled grammar. But over time, and as linguistics documented more languages, the things that are universal in grammars in this subdiscipline has essentially been reduced to 'merge', which is an abstract concept that I'm pretty sure I don't understand.

catlifeonmars 5y ago
> The more serious problem, I think, is that the corpus of Linear A is simply too tiny to do any serious study This is probably a silly question: but if there the corpus is so small, why are we convinced that it has any meaning at all?
ncmncm 5y ago
"There was originally thought" meaning "Chomsky thought". But it was all obvious bollocks, contrary to elementary natural selection. Grammars necessarily have to be compatible with brain organization inherited from our primate ancestors, who obviously could have had no "language organ" carried about waiting to find some sort of use by their future descendants. Brain structures all need to be immediately useful for surviving or reproducing. One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail, not necessarily of any survival value, originally, but needed to impress a potential mate. It could have been used to carry a tune. Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies. The two are not incompatible.
- catlifeonmars 5y ago
  > One theory has been that language runs on a bit of brain hypertrophied as a sort of peacock's tail > Others have suggested language originated between mothers and children, growing out of lullabies. Sources? ——- Separately, is language unique to humans? Are there examples of convergent evolution (semblances of grammatical structure) that can give us more clues as to how language may have evolved in humans?
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Grammatical language, e.g. with subclauses, does appear from evidence thus far to be unique to humans, although whalesong is complex enough that it might yet be found there. I gather that, since the "universal grammatical structure" was promoted, languages have been discovered that are said to lack any such forms. "Said to", because very few people are reporting on them. Sorry, for sources I would be doing the same DDGing you will.

deleted 5y ago

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