Overview

1
Overview

• This week
• W Bateson on cybernetic explanation
• TA office hours 230 - 4pm
• Th TA office hours 11am - 1230pm
• F Tutorial
• Return and discuss Quiz 1
• Exercise A DUE!
• Form study groups
• Discuss communicative systems

2
Language as a Communicative System

• Batesons (1972) cybernetic explanation

3
What does it meant to say thathuman language is
a communcative system?

• Some attempts to define necessary and sufficient
• conditions that characterize human communicative
  systems
• Bolingers (1975) language traits
• Hocketts (1966) design features
• III. Batesons (1972) cybernetic explanation

4
(No Transcript)
5
Clues from language

• Fill in the blank
• The Ling100 lectures lac___ zip.
• I wonder if ___ will rain today.
• Rose-Marie let the cat out of the ____.
• (context someone has suffered a memory loss)If
  this is a Ling100 lecture, then today is either
  ________ or ________
• Describe the situationThe vlatch is brooning
  all the preezes.
• Does this sentence describe a time-stable state
  or a dynamic event?
• At what time does the action take place?
• How many event participants are there?
• Which entity is performing the event? (Agent?)
• Which entity is affected by the event?
  (Theme/Patient?)

6
Communication by Humans and Machines

• Cybernetics was the first formal attempt to
  impose bi-directionally
• Machine formalism on problems of human
  communication.
• e.g., machine translation from one language to
  another
• Human attributes of communication on machines.
• e.g., information-based regulation and
  optimization of internal states.
• gt Fifty years later humans are often described
  with machine terms, machines are
  anthropomorphized.

7
How cybernetic explanationhelps us to understand
language

• Negative Explanation
• Restraints (aka constraints)
• Context versus Content
• Pattern and Redundancy
• Levels of Observation/Explanation
• Feedback
• Map and Territory
• Stimulus-Response vs. Cause-Effect
• Induction and Deduction

8
1. Negative Explanation

• One way to describe something is to ask what it
  is not, rather than to ask what it is.
• Ex Empirical tests of the statistical null
  hypothesisNOT A and B are different, (A ?
  B)BUT We failed to show that A and B are the
  same (NOT A B)
• Ex2 Given an alphabet of 26 letters and the need
  for one letter to be present, the presence of the
  letter k can be explained by the absence of the
  other 25 letters.
• Q Are negative explanations sufficient?

9
2. Restraints

• A process can be described negatively via
  constraints
• (a.k.a. restraints)
• as opposed to via positive properties
• Ex The spelling and order of the words are
  determined by specific constraints (i.e., things
  you cant do in English).
• From a cybernetic point of view, a word in a
  sentence, or a letter within the word, are
  to be (negatively) explained by an analysis of
  restraints. (Bateson 1972406)
• Q Must two systems share the same constraints in
  order for communication to occur?

10
3. Context vs. Content

• The content of observable events is given form by
  the context in which it occurs.
• Context is crucial for explaining contents.
• Communication is mainly about context.
• Ex The word falls needs to occur in a larger
  utterance for you to know whether it refers to a
  waterfall (i) or to the act of falling down (ii).
• (i) I saw Niagara falls last year(ii) Mary
  falls all the time
• Q How does context make not doing some action
  meaningful?I.e. What is the content of inaction?
• Q How does context make not doing some action
  meaningful?

11
4. Pattern and Redundancy

• Differences in occurrence are determined by
  constraints on context, whose lawfulness ensures
  observable patterns of recurrence.
• Redundancy exists when content can be predicted
  from context.

12
5. Levels of Observation/Explanation

• Thanks to context, informational systems are
  hierarchical.
• Negative explanation may become positive at one
  level when superceded by negative explanation at
  a higher level.
• Ex Choosing the word clear from a set of
  possible alternates,I can say positively that I
  know something about clear.
• clear vs. clean, cleave, cleat, etc.I know that
  /r/ is contrastive in the sound system of
  English.
• clear vs. clearer, clearestI know that clear is
  a possible word-form in English.
• The sky is clear, vs. Sally will clear the
  tableI know something about the syntax of clear.
• clear vs. overcast, cloudy, stormy, etc.I know
  something about the meaning of clear in English.
• Q How does selecting the word clear reflect
  knowledge of its contexts of use?

13
Linguistic Levels of Observation/Explanation
14
6. Feedback

• Feedback provides a system with information about
  its internal condition.
• Complex systems generally depend on both external
  and internal information.
• Ex As the noise level of a party increases, you
  speak louder in order to be heard.

15
7. Map versus Territory

• The map is not the territory (Korzybski)The
  name is not the thing named.
• This fundamental truth makes communication
  possible, but makes the study of communication
  very difficult.
• Ex Imagine if, when you ordered a hamburger, all
  you received was a small piece of the menu card.
• Ex2 Imagine if, when you discovered that a map
  failed to show a road that was actually there,
  the road would be removed.
• Q How do we distinguish map from territory?

16
8. Stimulus-Response vs. Cause-Effect

• Communication systems are not causal.
• Events are not determined by immutable
  constraints on the system.
• Ex The third time you ask me the same question,
  I may refuse to answer.
• Q Is a stimulus-response system an open system?

17
9. Induction and Deduction

• INDUCTION
• Bottom-up empirical observations give rise to
  higher-order generalizations
• Data-driven generalizations
• Emergent generalizations
• Statistical and probabilistic
• Disadvantage a data set (corpus) can have
  accidental gaps that make it impossible to detect
  certain patterns

• DEDUCTION
• Top-down theory generates hypotheses that
  predict existence of certain patterns
• Theory-driven generalizations
• Postulated generalizations
• Categorical
• Disadvantage a theory can make the observer
  blind to certain patterns (if you have a hammer,
  everything looks like a nail)