Will Humans Ever Transcend Natural Language?

I often wish language was more precise when I use it ... computers themselves cannot guess or infer anything, so code has to be very precise with every facet laid out precise and structured ... well structured isn't so necessary if "only" the computer is required to understand it but it still must be precise. nothing is allowed to remain ambiguous.

I think it maybe has to do with the way people write from top to bottom, maybe if people took the time to lay out a high level structure and then come back later and fill in the details where they are needed it would be better structured but I know me personally I'd probably forget the point I was trying to make by the time I did all that.

I wonder if humans will ever graduate from "natural languages" to a more precise for of communication, a language designed from the top down where the designers are careful in designing the grammar and syntax don't allow for ambiguous semantics. Like a programming language for humans.

The only problem I see with this is that human language is abstract by nature, and abstract concepts must be built from lower level concepts just be built from lower level concepts. I still think with the correct strict rules that this could be achieved since abstract "words" and idioms would still have to obey the rules of the language, though if not careful in the design it could regress back toward something more like a natural language.

it's obvious to me that advanced communication is what separates our species from pretty much all the others and is one of the biggest reasons that we can do the things we do, and make new progress everyday. Most species do pretty much the same thing from one generation to the next. I would imagine that a post human society would have an even more advanced form of communication than we do today. Efficient and precise.

 

The mind is naturally abstract and this is not a problem as it represents the ability to compare different scenarios or solve problems. The exactness of communication or lack of it is not caused by the abstract nature of the thing you are trying to communicate with but lack of or degree of familiarity with the communicator. Those who talk often to each other tend to feel like they understand each other more. It takes time to develop a common vocabulary because vocabulary is developed through personal historic associations,
even though we speak the same language.

To say I went to the store is a binary proposition in terms of you did or you didn't so those wordy terms are pretty precise at that level.

 

My take on natural language is in the form of uninhibited speech or mode of expression. Sometimes a generic whoop is more accurate than any other description in presenting the true statement within.

 

as a lover of language and words....I hope not. Language was invented as a way to communicate human thought and emotion in all its complexity and absurdness.

 

ace, you silly boy.
the natural world is analog, not digital. what you propose is a digital form of human communication....ain't gonna happen.

and there are already "structures" in place for organizing and presenting ideas accurately and succinctly.
did you already forget English class or have you not ever written a science paper?


and saying that language is what separates us from other critters is rather presumptuous and arrogant considering we have no way of knowing how intricate and developed other critters languages may be.
besides I always thought it was the opposable thumb that set us apart.

 

I also think that our physical composition also seperates us from the creepy crawlies.

 

we could always just grunt and groan....

can one type noises though....

 

Beh. Bah. Meh. Merrrh. Gahh. Wojibooka!!

 

not exactly what I had in mind there, Irm....

 

it wasn't really "invented" though. it want "planned" and designed but rather evolved naturally over a long time period, mostly from the bottom up.

I guess when it comes to abstraction, the abstract object can only be used and understood if it has first been defined, either as a collection of lower abstractions or low level language components. natural languages seem to blur the levels of abstraction, and I can't think of hardly one word that is not itself an abstraction except for the articles (this itself could be debateable). it's almost like strange loop logic actually (wikipedia it of interested) in that there is some type of strange circular dependency, where lower level concepts are the,selves abstractions that sometimes depend on other abstractions of higher level ... where these higher level abstraction include as part of their definition the concept itself that they are part of in a strange almost recursive type of fashion.

 

we can evolve to esp and then no language will ever be needed....i am almost there....anyway.....

animals seem to do this....I have seen it with my crew of animals many times.

 

you're right, evolved would have been a more precise word..which just goes to show there is precision within language.

 

Animals seem to communicate a lot by smell.

 

The only attempt I'm aware of the create a synthetic language is Esperanto which never really took off.

But ace - what about mathematics? Isn't that a language which has been designed?

 

Certainly is. It can be much more precise as well as brief in many cases. Esperanto, that sounds familiar. I did read of a synthetic language or two a few years ago, maybe that was it. IIRC, it was designed more or less with the same type of grammar as natural languages. I'm gonna Wikipedia it (yep, wikipedia is a verb ... I guess it's a good thing for language and words to be able to evolve new use as long as it's not terribly abused).

Sometimes people don't understand the meaning of words and misuse them, which brings the level of literacy down somewhat when others pick up these words and misapply them as well.

For example the concept of irony and the word "ironic". I hear people use the word in casual conversation to describe situations which are infact not ironic, even on TV.

 

I agree that language is often imprecise. And the meaning of words can change over time. For instance we say something is 'awful' when it's bad, but the original meaning was that an awful thing filled you with awe. There are many other examples. But at present we're pretty much stuck with language as it exists now.

As well as English I also speak a little French, which I consider to be much more 'old-world' than English. It would be interesting to be able to speak several languages. You could then compare how precise and accurate they are. One thing I've noticed is that the further back in time you go with English, the more cumbersome it is. The English we speak now is far more streamlined than it was even 100 years ago.

But language is a funny thing. As you say people often misuse words - but that's because they haven't fully mastered the language. On the other hand, used by a good writer language can do some amazing things in some areas.

Although this is off topic, a question that interests me is how language originated, and at what point in our evolution/development.

 

I think Fidel Castro could speak esperanto. He definitely was one of the leaders advocating this language.

 

Its interesting that written language developed later and somewhat independently of spoken language. Many ancient cultures had a different written language than the spoken one.

Language allows members of a species to ommunicate so spoken language in humans allows us to communicate more complex ideas at a greater level of precision than other forms of communication. It probably evolved from guttural utterances, whose meaning could be infererred from body language or other social cues. Things like grammar I'm sure evolved later, once the function of language was understood.

Written language is actually quite a big leap, and is more powerful than spoken language. Written language persists, potentially forever, long after first being written down. With spoken language you are limited to communicating with those who are in you vicinity of the speaker, and all parties that wish to communicate must be in the same location simultaneously. With writing, something can be written once, then read and understood by potentially an infinite number of people. It also allows for study and reflection, which means it allows for the study and learning of more advanced intellectual things.

Spoken language is a point to point type of communication, from one speaker to the next. Written language is essentially stored in some external medium first.

 

It must have been quite a breakthrough when people started to associate mouth noises with objects and concepts.

Written language seems to have come with the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural based cultures. There are still pre-literate cultures today, although they're under massive pressure. My guess is that they don't need written language because their culture is relatively simple compared to ours.

 

Humans may transcend Natural Language in the sense that language will continue to evolve. The use of internet acronyms may be a recent example of this. If by transcend, you mean stop natural language being used, I doubt language will be transcended in that sense. Most of our knowledge, which most people value is tied to language, so even if we had some sort of cerebral projector able to emanate pictures from our heads to communicate or something, I'm sure people would still want to speak on it.


Language may be imprecise at some level due to the fact, unlike the sentence in your signature Ace K, humans do not like being told exactly what to do, least not all the time. Humans seek a sense of autonomy, so it will be natural for humans to interpret any language in the context of their own life experience or even just to test the waters of their own ego. If it was math, we would have a guy or girl saying 3.14159265359 (didn't memorize that) is more precise in describing PI than 3.14.


I do not like how language is compartmentalized, I would like to see this aspect of language transcended. For instance, the language we use here, likely is quite different than the language(s) we use when having a local drink or toke with some friends, which is different from the language we may use at work. Language gets wrapped up and altered in your persona as you navigate your environment and specific interactions.

Due to limited memory store and capacity, time in the day, cultural assimilation, etc. we are rather bound to limit language. This may be in part why some words such as awful change meaning over time. It would be interesting, at least for internet discussions to try and integrate some form of color textual language. I think that could perhaps evoke meaning and mood more efficiently, the "body language" which often is not accounted for on internet discussion and sometimes leads to minsunderstandings.

Wittgenstein approached language as if it was a game. By game, he doesn't mean that we get bogged down in semantics, nor that we intentionally attempt to conflate people's words in discussion to win a discussion, rather that language is bound by rules like a game. I like this notion, that means we should be able to speak to context given the particular language game being implemented.