Re: unnatural languages

In article <1173929324.317738.63840@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 14, 5:25 pm, hru...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman Rubin) wrote:
In article <1173823970.981242.310...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 13, 4:53 pm, hru...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Herman Rubin) wrote:
In article <YE68kkJnro9FF...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Richard Herring <richard.herr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Few American college students speak reasonably grammatical
English, and their writing is not much better.
By now, you are either deliberately lying, or you are utterly
uneducable.

Possibly college students in language departments
students, and have read letters of application
by them.

Now you're growing simply incoherent. I have no idea what you just
tried to say.

Every human being (barring severe brain damage) speaks their native
language(s) "reasonably grammatical"ly.

Not in my experience.

Equivocation on "understand". Knowing that a particular verb ending
represents the pluperfect subjunctive is not the same thing as
extracting what it means. One doesn't understand speech in a foreign
language by consciously "looking up" each word in a mental primer.
One does not learn any concept by memorization. Do not
confuse learning the grammar with memorizing the rules.
How dare you attempt to respond to Richard's argument by repeating his

I did it in a far more general context.

That doesn't make it any more correct.

own words back at him.
Learning
the structure of French, or Hebrew, makes it possible
not to just translate, but to internalize what is learned.
That's not what "internalize" means, and learning *about* the structure
of a language doesn't help one to be fluent in it..
It certainly helps in reading.
No, it does not.
Even reading is mastered by children before "grammar" instruction

This is partly true, but it is not learned before
a good part of the structure of the grammars of
their languages have been internalized.

There you go with that nonsense again. That statement has no meaning
whatsoever.

Most children learn most of their grammar before starting
to read. They have a basis to learn more grammar before
much reading, and this should make it easier to learn to
read well, by having them use their knowledge of modifications
to reduce the need to have individual items learned.

Learning to read is an activity quite distinct from language
acquisition.
Is it? How about language acquisition by the deaf?
Are you suggesting that communicating via sign language is somehow
like reading?
Please learn something about something before you opine about it.
Unclear. What is a language? There is a language
of mathematics, which is entirely written;
Not a language in the sense that linguists use the word. How many times
do I have to repeat this?
If everyone used the term "language" in the sense you
are using it, world communication will decline.
splork
Most of the world's people have a very precise grasp
of basic arithmetic, and know exactly who owes whom and how much, both
in financial and moral terms.
I think you will find "basic arithmetic" not to be well
understood.
As you very well know, Richard is not using the term "basic
arithmetic" in the professional mathematician's sense of some obscure
division of mathematics, but in the sense of adding, subtracting,
mul;tiplying, and dividing.

They know the operations, but often have little or no idea
of what numbers, or the operations, mean. This in a
particular individual started the "new math" program.

IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THEY "MEAN."

On the contrary, this is what matters. If they know the
meaning, there are various ways of getting the operations
done. It is useless to know how to add if knowing when
to add it not present.

Mathematics can be widely applied. To apply it, knowing
the meaning is important, so that one can map the "real
world" problem into a mathematical problem, and then use
the power of mathematics to solve it.


When it comes to government, how many have
a clear idea of what even they would consider a good form?
Was that supposed to be interpretable?

Yes.

Well, it isn't.



There are three levels of language involved in statistics.
The immediate level is probability, which has its own
concepts, very poorly understood by those learning by
memorization and computation.
Not a language in the sense that linguists use the word.
Again, maybe the linguists should broaden their scope.
Some scientists have, and this group is sci.lang.
Maybe the statisticians should start using words the way other people
do.

Mathematicians, physicists, biologists, etc., have long
realized that they cannot do their subjects by doing so.

So what? They constitute a vanishingly small portion of the human
race, and they're entitled to their technical vocabulary. Just as
linguists are. And when you rush in where linguists gingerly tread,
you need to learn to use _our_ technical terminology correctly.

What does "number" mean? When looked at carefully, there
are several concepts here, at least two really basic ones.
One can define the arithmetic operations without having
a system of writing numbers, and will not understand them
until one can do this.

WHO CARES????

You should.

Most people seem to think that statistics is merely a
set of formulas into which data can be poured and will
output the state of the universe. Only magic can do
that much. They need to be taught that the size of a
good random sample needed for a given accuracy does not
depend on the population size if the population is large.
They need to understand probability, and I assure you
that this is NOT easy.

NO, THEY DO NOT. iT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE IN THEIR LIVES.

It certainly does.

If they cannot use that language, they will be unable
to understand the concepts.
If they cannot use that *notation system*, they will be unable to
understand the concepts. That doesn't make it a language.
Understanding the "notation system" is NOT enough.
It is a language, rigid in grammar, but with a small
but extendible vocabulary.
Nothing whatsoever to do with human language.

It certainly does. What language do you think people in
the various sciences use?

These days, mostly English.

English is primarily used for talking around the
material. The important part is in technical vocabulary,
and precise formulation, which is more mathematical than
you think. In many cases, the technical material can be
read without knowing the underlying language.

One is unlikely to get the technical vocabulary in the
normal course of learning a language. For example, in
a paper on efficient methods for multiple precision
arithmetic, I got hung up on "Einheit". I could reject
many uses of "oneness"; I did not know that it was used
in German works on rings for "unit", which has nothing
to do with "one", despite the English word being based
on the Latin for "one".


Those who have only learned words as arbitrary sequences
of characters, not subject to any phonic rules, will not
be able to use the alphabet even for easy words. One of
my former colleagues saw the word "rug" italicized as a
word the seventh graders could not be expected to know.
They just learn by rote a collection of words as strings
of letters, with no restrictions.
Evidently you're not aware that linguists do not endorse the "whole
word" method.

But many teachers do; see the letters to the editor
in the March 13 _New York Times_.

So what? Is anyone here defending "teachers"?

It seems you are suggesting learning languages in a
very similar manner to the whole word method for reading.

This is also what is done in teaching arithmetic as a
collection of rules for operations.

In statistics, they learn formulas, and apply them with
know idea of the limitations of the formulas, or the
desirability of using that formula in that situation.
If someone has some data, and just adds, subtracts,
multiplies, and divides almost at will, do you think
the result will be meaningful?
If the data are the prices of the goods in their shopping cart, and
they need to determine whether they have enough cash in their wallet
to pay for the goods plus the sales tax, then absolutely yes.
A vanishingly small portion of the population has any need for
anything more advanced.

Wrong. The human body is sufficiently complex that
medical actions should be taken by using the individual's
preferences for the various outcomes, weighted by the
probabilities. This applies to the whole population.

The patient does not need to know any of that. It's the medical team's
job to explain the alternatives.

The medical team should (they cannot do all that is needed
now) provide the probability distribution of the results
for the various alternatives, adjusted for the idiosyncracy
of the individual and the individual's prior beliefs. This
then needs to be combined with the individual's utility
function to decide what is best for that individual, and
finding a utility function often requires probability
considerations. Finally, the whole thing is often going to
require quantization and the use of computers to get the
assessment.

Note that I included the individual's prior beliefs. These
can make a fair difference in the medical team's assessment
of probabilities.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
.

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