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The challenge of non-discreteness:
Focal structure in language
Stockholm, August 31,
2012
Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics RAN
and Lomonosov Moscow State University)[email protected]
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The problem
We tend to think about language as a system of discrete, segmental units (phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences...)
But this view does not survive an encounter with reality
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Simple example: morpheme fusion
Russian adjective детский ‘children’s, childish’det-sk-ijchild-Attr-M.NomRoot-Suffix-Ending
suffix [ d’eck’ -ij ]
root Many human languages have something
like that in morphological structure
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Similar phenomena abound at all lingustic levels
Phonemes Syllables Words Clauses Sentences
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Phonemes Coarticulation: cat keep cool Engwall (2000): articulographic study of how
pronunciation of Swedish fricatives is affected by surrounding vowels
Sequences such as asa, ɪsɪ, ɔsɔ, ʊsʊ, aɕa, ɔʂɔ, ʊfʊ, etc.
For example: context of labial vowels strongly increases lip protrusion
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Phonemes (continued) Also, the tongue
is more anterior in the context of the front vowel /ɪ/ compared to back vowels (Engwall 2000: 10) That is, boundaries between “segments” are not really segmental Trying to posit boundaries in the signal inevitably means a kind of
digitalization
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Syllables
Language speakers often naturally “feel” the syllabic structure But segmentation into syllables is usually less than clear-cut For example, speakers of Pulaar confidently segment words
into syllables, e.g. gor |ko ‘man’ But cf. the behavior of geminated consonants On the one hand, when asked to segment a word into
syllables, speakers of Pulaar usually posit a boundary between the two copies of a geminated consonant: hok |kam ‘give me’
On the other hand, a Pulaar secret language is reported the encrypting sequence lfV is inserted after the first syllable of a
word (Gaden 1914, Labouret 1952: 108): hokkamndiyam ‘give.me water’ holfokkam ndilfiyam
Geminates such as kk are thus inconsistent: in some way they belong to two different syllables in some other way they form the onset of a syllable (Koval 2000:
114, 185)
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Words
Possessive constructions N + N English is often said to have two kinds of genitives:
synthetic s-genitive: the queen’s retinue analytic of-genitive: the retinue of the queen
On the one hand, of is a preposition and thus clearly belongs to the possessor rather than to the possessed the retinue [of the queen], lots [of stuff]
On the other hand, there are indications of reanalysis Jurafsky et al. 1998: of is so often reduced that one must posit the allomorph
[ɔ] Native users of English feel that and render that in spelling, also altering the
affiliation of the clitic lots of > lotsa, couple of > coupla “Kinda outta luck” (song by Lana del Rey)
This kind of graphic practices suggest that language users attach the clitic of to the possessed rather than to the possessor
In terms of Nichols 1986, in these kinds of examples English hesitates on behaving as dependent-marking or head-marking
Of displays doubleface behavior in two ways as any clitic, it is a semi-word, that is something between a word and an affix it oscillates between two possible hosts
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Clauses
Widely held view of “syntax from the discourse perspective” (see Chafe 1994): Local discourse structure consists of quanta, or
chunks, or elementary discourse units (EDUs) (Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009)
EDUs can be defined by a set of prosodic criteria Thus identified EDUs typically coincide with
clauses The level of such coincidence mostly varies
within the range between 1/2 and 3/4
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Clauses (continued)
LanguagePercentage of clausal EDUs
English (Chafe 1994) 60%
Mandarin (Iwasaki and Tao 1993) 39.8%
Sasak (Wouk 2008) 51.7%
Japanese (Matsumoto 2000) 68%
Russian (Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009)
67.7%
Upper Kuskokwim (Kibrik 2012) 70.8%
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Clauses (continued)
However, there is a significant residue Non-clausal EDUs
Subclausal EDUs• Increments
(translation from a Russian spoken corpus “Night Dream Stories” – Kibrik and Podlesskaya eds. 2009) And suddenly I saw a box. With a ribbon on top.
Increments appear after a clear prosodic boundary At the same time, they semantically and
grammatically fit into the preceding base clause Such increments simultaneously belong and do not
belong to the preceding clause They are outliers in clause structure
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Paradigmatics So far we have only discussed difficulties associated
with the syntagmatic indentification of units The same problem applies to paradigmatic boundaries
That is, boundaries between classes, types, or categories in an inventory
Marginal phonemes “One might consider the voiceless velar fricative /x/ occurring
in words such as Bach (the German composer) or loch (a Scottish lake) as a marginal phoneme for some speakers of English” (Brinton and Brinton 2010: 53)
Russian [w] in loan words• Russian has phonemes /v/ and /u/• English William > Russian Вильям or Уильям
Vil’jam Uil’jam[v] [u],
recently [w]• English wow > Russian: usually spelled вау vau, pronounced
[wau]
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Semantics
Semantics provides particularly abundant evidence of non-discrete boundaries
Plethora of examples have been discussed in cognitive semantics
Textbook example from Labov’s 1973 “Boundaries of words and their meanings”
cup bowl
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Diachronic change
Diachrony provides innumerable examples of non-discrete boundaries between linguistic elements or stages
Hock and Joseph 1996: 237-238 Old English wēod ‘plant’ and wæ ̅d(e) ‘garment’ Both developed into modern English weed The meaning ‘garment’ only survives in a couple of
expressions, such as widow’s weed ‘a widow’s mourning clothes’
Modern speakers tend to connect this usage with the winning weed
The erstwhile meaning of wæ ̅d(e) is echoed in the modern language as a faint trace
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Language wholeness Languages are identifiable, but
every language has internal variation
Consider a very small language, Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan
Ethnic group of about 200 individuals in central interior Alaska
About 20 remaining speakers The members of the group
have a clear feeling of identity, as well as separateness from other neighboring Athabaskan languages
Still, striking dialectal variation In particular, the rendering of
Proto-Athabaskan coronal consonant series
© Michael Krauss, 2011
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Language wholeness (continued)
Interdental
Dental Retroflex
As in:
Dialect: ‘my tongue’
‘snow’ ‘raven’
Conservative: no merger
sitsula’ tsetł' dotron' Tanana
Standard merger: loss of interdentals
sitsula’ tsetł' dotron' Tsetsaut
Downriver merger: loss of retroflex
sitsula’ tsetł' dotson' Koyukon
Merger of all three
sitsula’ tsetł' dotson' Ahtna
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Language wholeness (continued)
Note that the rendering of coronal series is traditionally used as the basis for classifying the family into branches
This situation can be explained by geographical and demographic factors The Upper Kuskokwim traditional territory probably
occupied over 50 K square kilometers Traditionally, contact between famlies/bands was
seasonal or sporadic
Still, what identifies the language’s wholeness and boundaries in terms of internal characteristics?
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Proto-languages
Linguists often speak about proto-languages (Proto-Germanic, Proto-IE, etc.), as if they were fixed, 100% homogeneous communities without any internal variation
Dahl (2001) discussed the status of Old Nordic He questions the notion of Common Nordic and the
assumption that the Scandinavians “changed their language all at the same time and in the same fashion, as if conforming to a EU regulation on the length of cucumbers” (p. 227).
Contrary to the traditional tree-like picture of a proto-language splitting into daughter languages, Dahl suggests that the spread of prestige dialects may have led to a decrease in diversity and to unification
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Language contact
Trudgill 2011: 56-58 Contact with Low German affected Scandinavian
languages significantly This influence can generally be described as
simplification That was possible because in the 1400s cities such
as Bergen and Stockholm had about 1/3 or more of German population
When non-native population reaches close to 50%, natives accommodate
Boundaries between languages are thus penetrable
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Other cognitive domains
Studies by the Russian psychologist Yuri Alexandrov Alexandrov and Sergienko 2003:
psychophysiological experiments demonstrate the non-disjunctive character of mind and behavior
• “Continuity is the overarching principle in the organization of living things at various levels” (p. 105)
Alexandrov and Alexandrova 2010: complementary, non-disjunctive character of cultures
• Niels Bohr, discussing the relationships between cultures, emphasized that, “unlike physics <...> there is no mutual exclusion of properties belonging to different cultures”.
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Intermediate conclusion
Language (as well as cognition in general) simultaneously longs for discrete, segmented structure tries to avoid it
The omnipresence of non-discreteness effects has not yet led to proper recognition in the mainstream linguistic thinking
Linguists are often bashful about non-discreteness But non-discreteness is not just a nuisance Non-discrete effects permeate every single aspect
of language This problem is in the core of theoretical debates
about language
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Possible reactions
“Digital” linguistics:
More inclusive (“analog”) linguistics: often a mere statement of continuous boundaries and countless intermediate/borderline cases
ignore non-discrete phenomena or dismiss them as minor
Ferdinand de Saussure: language only consists of identities and
differences
the discreteness
delusion
a bit too simplistic
appeal of scientific
rigor but reductionism
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Cognitive science
Wittgenstein: family resemblance Rosch: prototype theory Lakoff: radial categories
A
B
C
D A is the prototypical phoneme/word/clause/meaning...
B, C, and D are less prototypical representatives
We still need a theory for: boundaries between related categories boundaries in the syntagmatic structure
Picture from Janda and
Nesset 2012
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My main suggestion
In the case of language we see the structure that combines the properties of discrete and non-discrete: focal structure
Focal phenomena are simultaneously distinct and related
Focal structure is a special kind of structure found in linguistic phenomena, alternative to the discrete structure
It is the hallmark of linguistic and, possibly, cognitive phenomena, in constrast to simpler kinds of matter
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Various kinds of structures
▐focal point 1
focal point 2
discrete structure
▐continuous structure
focal structure
1 2
1 2
or anchor pointoutlier hybrid
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A possible analogy: neuronal structure with synapses
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Examples
▐focal point 1
focal point 2
det [c] skv w u wēod (widow’s) weed wæ̅̅d(e) Old Norse Norwegian Low
German
Syntagm.
Paradigm.
Diachr.
Lg.contact
etc., etc.
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Caveat
The claim about non-discrete boundaries should not be overstated
Phonemes, words, clauses, and languages do exist They are just not as discrete and segmental as we
apparently want them to be We should not replace the discrete structure with
the idea of a mere continuum, basically non-structure
Cf. Goddard 2010: 233 defending the discrete character of meaning by dismissing the idea of a continuum or merging
Something like focal structure is in order as the major model of linguistic and cognitive “matter”
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Peripheral status of non-discrete phenomena in linguistics
Are linguists unaware about the non-discreteness effects?
No, they are aware of them “distinct but related”
But they tend to ignore themWhy? I am not sureBut I suspect the answer is related to
the well known Kant’s problem
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Kant’s puzzle The Critique of Pure Reason: The role of observer, or
cognizer, crucially affects the knowledge of the world “The schematicism by which our understanding deals
with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.”
It is possible that the human analytical mind is digital, and it wants its object of observation to be digital as well
In addition, standards of scientific thought have developed on the basis of physical, rather than cognitive, reality
Physical reality is much more prone to the discrete approach
Compared to physical world, in the case of language and other cognitive processes Kant’s problem is much more acute because mind here functions both as an observer and
an object of observation, so making the distinction between the two is difficult
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A paradoxical state of affairs
Language is full of non-discrete phenomena But our “digital” mind is biased towards discreteness
Perhaps, partly because of the scientific tradition based on segmentation and categorization (Aristotelian, “rational”, “left-hemispheric”, etc.)
It is like eyeglasses keeping only a part of the reality and filtering out the rest
Addressing the “analog” reality in its entirety is often perceived as pseudo-science, or quasi-science at best
Language is unknowable, a Ding an sich?
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What to do?
We need to develop a more embracing linguistics and cognitive science that address non-discrete phenomena:
not as exceptions or periphery of language and cognition
but rather as their core Can we outwit our mind? Two suggestions towards this goal
1. Object of investigation: concentrate on obviously non-discrete communication channels, not so burdened with the tradition of discrete analysis
2. Methodology: new type of models
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SUGGESTION 1: Look at communication channels other than verbal
Explore gesticulation accompanying speech Michael Tomasello (2009): in order to “understand how
humans communicate with one another using a language <…> we must first understand how humans communicate with one another using natural gestures”
I discuss a case study in “Reference of discourse” (2011) Explore prosody
Sandro Kodzasov (2011): “there is a multitude of prosodic techniques <...> defining the basic gestalts of our perception of the world”
These communication channels are obviously less discrete than the verbal code
So it may be a good idea to develop new theoretical approaches on the basis of gesticulation and prosody, then apply them to traditional, “segmental” language
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Sentences
In written language, sentences are separated from each other by dedicated punctuation marks
Is the notion of sentence applicable to spoken language? cf. the “written language bias” (Linell 2005) written language, inherently digital, hypnotizes people and
makes them think that language is generally discrete
“Is sentence viable?” (Kibrik 2008) In brief, spoken Russian displays two major prosodic
patterns: “comma intonation”: rising on the main accent of EDU “period intonation”: final falling on the main accent of EDUBut also “falling comma intonation” – non-final falling: similar to comma intonation in terms of discourse semantics formally similar to period intonation
/ ,
\ .
\ ,
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What to do?
It appears that non-final falling is not as low as final falling
But the difference cannot be identified in absolute terms
• Great variation (gender, individual)• What is final falling in one person can be non-final in
another Employ the speaker’s “prosodic portrait” Final falling , targets at the bottom
of the given speaker’s F0 range Non-final falling targets at a level several
dozen Hz (several semitones) higher than the final falling in the given speaker
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F0 graph for an example
\ozero, \malen’koe \nebol’ \brevno kakoe \mosta.
takoe, šoe.-to,
12 10 125
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There was a lake, /either a river, /or a lake, /but I guess a lake, \because somehow it was small,
\not a big one. \And across it there was a log, \like a bridge. \
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Representation of EDU continuity types (or “phase” types) in corpus
33%
23%
44%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Finalfalling
Non-finalfalling
(Non-final)rising
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Sentences (continued) There are clearly contrasted, focal patterns:
final falling (end) rising (non-end)
Speakers and listeners usually “know” when a sentence is completed and when it is not
Spoken sentences are the prototype of written sentences
In addition, the hybrid type must be recognized: non-final falling It can be identified on the basis of speaker’s prosodic
portraits This helps to deal with tremendous phonetic variation
With this analysis, the notion of spoken sentence remains viable
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SUGGESTION 2:Entertain another type of models
Methodological point 1960s: a fashion of “mathematical
methods” in linguistics That did not bring much fruit, primarily
because of the non-discreteness effects Time for another attempt of bringing in
more useful kinds of mathematics
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Ongoing project: Modeling referential choice in discourse When we mention a person/object, we choose from a set of
options proper name: Kant description: the philosopher reduced form: he
Corpus of Wall Street Journal texts words – 45016, EDUs – 5497, anaphors – 3994
Annotation for multiple variables, candidate factors of ref. choice distances to antecedent antecedent’s syntactic role protagonisthood animacy ..............
Machine learning algorithms logical logistic regression compositions
Two-way task: Full NP vs. pronoun Three-way task: proper name vs. description vs. pronoun
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Results of machine learning modeling
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Non-categorical referential choice
100% accuracy cannot be reached The choice is not always deterministic:
often only one option is appropriate sometimes both Kant and he are appropriate
Experiment (Mariya Khudyakova) Nine texts in which the algorithms deviated in their
prediction compared to the original referential choice: pronoun instead of a proper name
Each text was presented to 60 experiment participants, in one of the two variations: original (proper name) and altered (pronoun)
Questions testing the understanding of the referent in question
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Non-categorical referential choice (continued)
In seven texts out of nine, accuracy of answers to pronouns was the same as in answers to proper names In these instances the algorithm correctly predicted a
pronoun, even though deviating from the original referential choice
In two instances participants showed a significant drop in their accuracy In these instances the algorithms erred in their prediction
Logistic regression provides the degree of certainty in prediction that can be, with due caution, interpreted as probability
In one more instance the algorithm showed too high certainty of prediction (0.89) which must not be the case given that the original choice was different We are working on the improvement of the method (Kibrik et
al. ms. 2012)
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New type of models (continued)
Non-categorical referential choice: a hybrid between the clear, focal instances
Probabilistic modeling and machine learning techniques can be used to simulate human behavior in non-categorical situations
We need to employ mathematical methods appropriate for the “cognitive matter”
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Conclusion Just as we invoke scientific thinking, we tend to
immediately turn to discrete analysis This may the reason why discrete linguistics is so
popular, in spite of the omnipresence and obviousness of non-discrete effects
This may be our inherent bias, or a habit developed in natural sciences, or a cultural preference
But in the case of language and other cognitive processes we do see the limits of the traditional discrete approach
It remains an open question if linguists and cognitive scientists are able to eventually overcome the strong bias towards “pure reason” and discrete analysis, or language will remain a Ding an sich
But it is worth trying to circumvent this bias and to seriously explore the focal, non-discrete structure that is in the very core of language and cognition
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Thanks for your attention
CONGENIAL QUOTATIONS
“Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.” (Sapir 1921: 38)
“Words as well as the world itself display the ‘orderly heterogeneity’ which characterizes language as a whole” (Labov 1973: 30)
“The mind-brain is both modular and interconnected <...> To insist on one to the exclustion of the other is to short-change the enormous complexity of this quintessentially hybrid system” (Givón 1999: 107-108)
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Acknowledgements
Yuri AlexandrovMira BergelsonSvetlana BurlakOlga Fedorova
Vera PodlesskayaNatalia SlioussarValery Solovyev