I haven't made this apparent on my blog, until now, but I love languages. Recently I've realized that one of the main things that separates humans from animals is the way we communicate with each other. Animals communicate through signals, and sometimes sounds, but these are based on instinct. Although humans also have instinctive signals, such as the smile, we base much of our communication on sounds that have no meanings themselves, assigning different meanings to particular sound patterns. Although the meanings of the sounds are not based on instinct, our desire to develop symbolic representations for our thoughts is.
Today in class I realized that human capacity for language is the reason we were able to invent computers. Without the innate understanding of symbols we posses, we would have had difficulty inventing a symbolic system that computers could understand. Also, without the power of symbols, we would probably never have been able to express the more complex thoughts we have. I don't think the idea "m(x^2 + 6) = 4" (a step in a math problem I worked on today) could ever be expressed without the aid of symbols.
Brad, from my Civ Class, recently posted on the evolution of language, and observed that the difference between "correct" language and texting abbreviations is no greater than the difference between our language and that of Shakespeare. One thing I've personally noticed is that there always seems to be a gap between formal and informal speech, because educated people are more willing to accept traditional forms of speech. I think sticking to established language conventions sometimes help us be more understandable, but I also think we should be less critical of different styles of speech. Since the only meaning of language is arbitrary, all styles of our language make sense to those who use them, and expressions that are currently banned from formal communication may be considered indispensable a hundred years from now. Language of any kind is a miracle, and we should never take it for granted.
I'm taking an introductory linguistics class this semester, and I am beginning to see why you say you love languages. One feature of human language we talked about in my linguistics class is productivity/creativity; we can produce and understand phrases and sentences that we have never heard produced before. In fact, my professor told us that from one sentence of 20 words there are ONE HUNDRED MILLION TRILLION sentences possible. Not an exaggeration--FACT. Pretty incredible. If we have that sort of creative capacity, it's no wonder that technology, with its use of computer languages, has taken such leaps and bounds over the past 50 years.
ReplyDeleteI think language capacity is what makes computers so interesting actually. The fact that we've taken language and used it to create computers is wonderful.
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