Talk:Linguistics

Semantics

There's little on semantics in the article. I am a semantician and I can prepare some contributions and show it to the community. If we all agree on it, let's add it in. Fellowscientist (talk) 11:36, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead and add a short introduction to the field of semantics and its relation to general linguistics. Sounds fine.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:31, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't seem to be able to edit the article. It's limited. Fellowscientist (talk) 21:57, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that. You can post your addition here at the talk page, and one of us will move it over to the main article after reviewing it. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:17, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Drclausen, 1 July 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Outside of anthropology I don't know anyone who considers linguistics a subfield of anthropology, especially considering it is almost never housed in the department of anthropology and actually contains its own sub discipline of Anthropological linguistics. A more accurate description would be that it is a division of Cognitive Science. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/

Change: and is one of the four subfields of anthropology. To: and is one of the subdivisions of Cognitive Science.

This edit would also add consistency with the Wikipedia page on Cognitive Science. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science

Drclausen (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm no expert however I think this is debatable. I'm also hesitant to make the change because the current wording has a citation, and it would mean removing/invalidating that citation. Perhaps if you could reword your proposal to append "subdivisions of Cognitive Science" in some way instead of replacing the current text? -- œ^™ 00:11, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

While many departments of Linguistics are independent now, many are housed in different places in the campus structure. There are several common places: in Languages, in Anthropology, in English. Cognitive Science is not one of those locations. I resist being categorized as a "cognitive scientist". My natural leaning is toward either Languages or Anthropology. Only theoretical syntacticians (following Chomsky) might lean towards Cognitive Science. I would prefer Social Science as a super-category that includes more of linguistics than just Chomskyan-inspired subfields. While none of the intro textbooks I just glanced at say, "Linguistics is a subfield of X", they all emphasize language's social function and none really talk about language as a cognitive function. Without that social angle, language has no function. Therefore, it is more natural that linguistics is a social science, not a cognitive science. The connection with anthropology is traditional not from the angle of linguistics, but anthropologists consider linguistics to be one of their four branches. Linguistics has two main parents: Anthropology and (Classical) Philology (depending on whether you come from the New World or the Old World). The sentence, "linguistics is one of the four subfields of anthropology" is 100% accurate because that's how anthropologists define the field of anthropology. But linguists don't say that. But as a super-category, introductory textbooks emphasize the social aspects of language, so "Social Science" is far more accurate than the limited "Cognitive Science". When I was doing fieldwork and writing the first grammar of a language, "cognition" had nothing to do with it. --Taivo (talk) 00:59, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I agree that Cognitive Science may be a little restrictive and Social Science would be an appropriate super category. I certainly don't want to imply Chomskyian linguistics is the primary focus of linguistics. While Linguistics may be historically related to Anthropology, it is also related to many other fields including Philosophy and Psychology. As it is currently practiced however, it operates as a completely separate academic discipline. According to the NSF it falls under a category completely separate from Anthropology http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=BCS . I also provided a reference that indicated that other groups consider Linguistics a subdivision of Cognitive Science. Given the contentious nature of classifying one area of academic research as a subpart of the other maybe it is best to simply say "and is one of the subdivisions of Social Science." We seem to all agree that it is a Social Science and this leaves the issue of privileging one discipline over the other out of it. It might be better to highlight the large degree of overlap in both methodologies and subject matter between subparts of the two disciplines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drclausen (talk • contribs) 18:00, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Can't we just not call it a sub-field of anything, at least not in the very first sentence of the article? "Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language" is a simple, straightforward description of what linguistics is. Continuing with "Linguistics is a sub-field of X" is just an attempt at pigeon-holing that is not overly informative to the average reader (how does it help them understand what linguistics is?), and is rather contentious for the informed reader (it's just begging for a turf war -- I'm a linguist and I certainly don't consider myself an anthropologist). I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to classify linguistics, but I don't think it needs to be leading the article. (Furthermore, the citation doesn't even explicitly state that linguistics is a sub-field of anthropology -- it says that traditionally, in the US, some anthropologists have been trained in linguistics. Saying that some anthropologists do linguistics doesn't mean that all of linguistics is a sub-field of anthropology.) WillNL (talk) 11:03, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Similar discussion has come before, though sometimes in passing. See especially /Archive 4#anthropology and other discussion in that archive, as well as mentions in /Archive 5 and /Archive 3. (But beware that you are wading close to the whole "post-structural linguistics" morass.)

To offer a very short rehash from my own point of view: Historically (roughly 1890s-1970s), linguistics was considered a subfield of anthropology in North America, especially the USA, but not so much in Europe, India, the former Soviet Union, etc. Since about the 1970s North Americans have often treated linguistics as a separate field, not a subfield of anthropology, modern languages, psychology, or other fields to which it is related (but see also Taivo's list of sundry university departments housing linguistics divisions, above). Cnilep (talk) 15:36, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

"Language and Natural Language"

This is a rather silly repetition. It's one or the other, not both. --Taivo (talk) 06:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

In fact, especially in the first sentence, is should NOT be "natural language." Linguists were behind Esperanto--a wholly artificial language. Linguists also study other artificial languages, from computer programming languages to communication codes. Reynoldst (talk) 16:05, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto was not a linguist but an ophthalmologist, and generally constructed languages are not of interest to linguists as more than curiosities. Some semioticians might study programming languages, but you would be hard pressed to find linguists working on that. ·Maunus·ƛ· 16:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello. Can I care to contribute? I feel the word natural is a bit ambiguous. How would we explain computational linguistics then? Fellowscientist (talk) 09:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Computational linguists usually work with processing natural language through computers, not by applying the tools of linguistics to programming languages.·Maunus·ƛ· 12:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

But I'm not talking about that kind of language. HTML is also called a language. Artificial languages? Sans artificial intelligence? Don't computational linguists work on artificial language? Fellowscientist (talk) 13:15, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

It is not coming across clearly what you are trying to suggest. If you are suggesting that computational linguists study programming languages such as html that is wrong. Programming languages are called languages but they are not languages in linguistic sense but codes. Artificial languages are languages that are constructed by humans for specific purposes - they do not really have anything to do with artificial intelligence. Some linguists do try to make computers emulate natural language processing by creating kinds of artificial intelligence, but their interest is natural language and how to make computers produce it.·Maunus·ƛ· 13:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Have you seen the article computational linguistics? Maybe you are using an idiosyncratic definition for the term? Just because linguists study language doesn't mean they must study everything that is called a language. Words have different meanings in different contexts. E.g. in mathematics a "language" is just a set of strings, with no semantics attached (a priori). Hans Adler 14:04, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I know Maunus. I think you are right too, Hans Adler. But it would still sound nice if we broadened the scope of language. What's the harm in doing that? Fellowscientist (talk) 19:41, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of broadening the definition to language in general - or maybe to "human language".·Maunus·ƛ· 19:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that "human language" is better than "natural language", but disagree with just plain "language". "Language" has become too broad a term, encompassing "body language", "language of love", "computer language", "animal language", etc. Linguistics is not scientifically interested in these other things except as they touch on the understanding of "human language". --Taivo (talk) 20:58, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, conlangs do not generally hold much interest for linguists, but linguistics would be properly concerned with them, e.g. if they were to creolize and thus become more interesting from that POV. (After all, several sign languages are probably at least partially conlangs.) So 'natural' in the sense of 'non-artificial' is not necessary IMO. — kwami (talk) 21:10, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually I think a linguistics professor close to where you are Taivo, Dirk Elzinga, has done work on conlangs, Marc Okrand was also a linguist.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:27, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Maunus, they have invented conlangs, but that is taking linguistics and applying it beyond human language. The directionality is different. It's like the difference between the physics of sound and music. One is the artistic application of the other, but the reverse is not necessarily true. It's the difference between science and applied science. Like I mentioned above, studying conlangs in a linguistic sense doesn't help us to describe conlangs themselves, but is a way to understand aspects of human language. Understanding human language is the goal of linguistics. --Taivo (talk) 21:38, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

But conlangs are invented by humans, how can they go beyond human language? For me it is the stuudy of possible languages and can I believe the study of conlangs could possibly constribute to our understanding of the human language faculty, at least to the same extent as for example introspective data form English. I also know some linguists have worked with studying acquisition of constructed languages in order to understand constraints on learning etc. Many linguists have worked with animal communication as well - e.g. Tomasello uses data form animal communication to develop a theory on the origins of human language. I am just arguing that linguistics can take data from many different places and bring it to bear on the study of human languages. ·Maunus·ƛ· 21:44, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with you that information from other places can enlighten our understanding of human languages. But whenever a linguist explores the wider world, it is always with the goal of bringing more understanding to the fundamental issue of linguistics--human language. With that aim, a linguist can look at geography or religion or history or physiology or psychology, etc., but he/she always brings it back to human language. So rather than saying a linguist studies "A, B, C, D, E, and F", it is fundamentally the case that a linguist studies "human language", bringing to bear whatever variety of tools he/she feels is useful. --Taivo (talk) 21:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Btw. Now that we are all gathered here, have any of you had a chance to look at the rather substantial rewriting process I have begun over at Language - your comments and contributions would be appreciated.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:36, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I support the change of "natural language" to "human language" as it more accurately captures my understanding of what Linguistics is. Allformweek (talk) 23:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

The use of "human" here is a pleonasm - all language is human; the term is only extended to other species in a metaphorical sense. Also, artificical languages, which are not the subject of linguistics, are clearly part of human language. "Natural" is the term needed to circumscribe the aspects of "human language" which are the subject matter of linguistics. --Pfold (talk) 14:10, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Artificial languages are not human language. --Taivo (talk) 14:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I also believe that conlangs and certain "unnatural" languages could be of interest to the domain of cognitive linguistics, a very valid part of linguistics study as a whole. Fellowscientist (talk) 16:30, 4 October 2010 (UTC) Fellowscientist (talk) 17:03, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Many things are "of interest" to linguists, but only as they shed light on the primary subject of human language. --Taivo (talk) 17:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I would certainly like to see the overextension of the word "language" end, but I'm not convinced that there is anything metaphorical about it. I think to most people, "language" is a totally natural way to describe any system of communication or information representation. What do you guys think about this possibility: "Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Among linguists, the term "language" has a technical meaning, from which artificial language, computer code, and animal communication are excluded." Allformweek (talk) 20:27, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to editors to vote/discuss definition of science in Talk:Science

There has been an extensive discussion on the Talk:Science of what the lead definition of the science article should be. I suspect this might be an issue that may be of interest to the editors of this page. If so, please come to the voting section of the talk science page to vote and express your views. Thank you. mezzaninelounge (talk) 18:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

...language

for anyone reading, the edit in question is [1]. rʨanaɢ (talk) 19:08, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Rjanag wrote: "rv good faith edits: innate language is an issue in much of linguistics study but there is certainly ling. that doesn't concern itself with innate language. putting it in 1st sentence is WP:UNDUE" - At issue is the fact that linguistics does go beyond the study of natural language to the study of language itself, which I represented as innate language. I think this basic point needs to be made clear in the article lede. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 02:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to suggest that all fields of linguistics concern themselves with innate language. Sure, more psychological ones do (psycho/neurolinguistics, language acquisition, syntax...), but plenty of legitimate fields of linguistics, such as sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics, are not really all that concerned with the innate representation of language. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The issue is not to suggest that all fields of linguistics study one thing or another. I don't understand why you are imparting this qualification to what I propose. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 06:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

We can't just introduce the concept of innate language like that - it is not an assumption with which most linguists agree that there is such a thing. Language as a mental faculty is not the same as innate language.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Well then what does "innate language" mean if not the symbolic system of the cognitive faculty itself? -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 23:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Innate language is a concept used in relation to the notion of Universal Grammar that holds that a large part of actual language is innate. Not all linguists believe that there is any basis for believing in the reality of innate language. The human capacity for acquiring language isn't necessarily a kind of "language", many linguists see it particularly as a neurally conditioned propensity for symbolic communication that can be developed though social interaction, they wouldn't describe that as "innate language". ·Maunus·ƛ· 14:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, the point of saying "natural language" rather than "language" is to exclude constructed languages, computer languages, animal languages, &c. from the scope of linguistics. What does "innate language" include that "natural language" would exclude besides a Chomskian connotation? Allformweek (talk) 22:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a good point, but my sense is that "natural language" is used here to differentiate from "language" which to my mind points directly to the innate concept, not the other types you list. Got to run. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 23:54, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear to me that "natural language" is used here to differentiate from artificial languages (like, say, Python or Esperanto) and the non-linguistic communication systems of other species. The reason for using that term (in fact, I think I vaguely remember the disputes that led to its being used instead of just "language") is to exclude these things, not to exclude the innate part of language. The study of natural language, in other words, still encompasses quite a lot of things: Universal Grammar; acquired grammar; I-language; E-language; competence; production... garik (talk) 10:57, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

That is exactly what the "natural" is there for - it was included after long discussions with Supriya about what exactly linguistics is studying. I still favour just having "linguistics is the study of language" unqualified - but I don't think there is consensus for that.·Maunus·ƛ· 14:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Maunus wrote: "I still favour just having "linguistics is the study of language" - In its purest form, to my mind at least, that's what linguistics actually is. I think the lead suffers a bit from the idea that natural language is the conceptual top of the ladder. Im simply suggesting that the intro mention the cognitive sciences and (in the way article leads need to differentiate from related concepts) mention that one of the objects of CS is the fore mentioned "innate language." -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 17:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree with Stevertigo :Fellowscientist (talk) 19:48, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Like I said at the top, it's fine to mention that, but it would be wrong to imply that linguistics is only concerned with teh cognitive side of things. There is plenty of linguistics that is not cognitive science. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:42, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Understood. Will come up with some proposed additions. -Stevertigo (t | log | c) 18:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)