IPB

Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )

Rovers - He Or She?
Tman
post Jun 21 2005, 07:41 AM
Post #1


Member
***

Group: Members
Posts: 877
Joined: 7-March 05
From: Switzerland
Member No.: 186



I'm still confused about the gender of Spirit and Oppy! What the consent about? If Spirit female (so I think) then make it sense to keep quiet about her age and make she younger biggrin.gif

No kidding! I would like to know which personal pronoun (she, her or he, his etc.) I have to use by Spirit's and Oppy's gender definitely? smile.gif


--------------------
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
 
Start new topic
Replies
Guest_Richard Trigaux_*
post Jun 25 2005, 06:49 AM
Post #2





Guests






what I think is that languages are historical buildings, this meaning that there was no guideline into the building of a language over history. There are some slow evolutions over length of time, and some faster events, at the occasion of conquests, or at the occasion of some attempts to reform the language. So there is no rational line tying the whole thing, only parts of rationals about certain structures, which can eventually clash with others.

In French, of course the latin and greek sources are sensitive, but many ancient words come from the Francs, a germanic tribe which was at the origin of the name "france" and of the early french kings (Merovingians). The other "barbarian" tribes influenced other regions, for instance the Wisigoth language has discernable influences in Occitan and Catalan and Castillan (spanish). But there are also a bunch or former gaelic words still used today. The funniest of all is that all this non-latin words received a gender!

We have gendered words, but you should know that other languages have also their own difficulties. For instance Chinese language has music notes, and a simple word like "chang" can have very different meanings, if it is sung with ascending two notes, or descending two notes, or equal. Chineses, in order to speak, have to develop the regions of the brain normally devoted to musical sensitivity! Not to speak of, when learning chinese as a second language, to learn that thousands of ideograms! However Chinese manage to understand each other and to be a brillant country.

In Tibetan there is simply no gender at all, and even no pronouns. You can even not guess the gender of a person from her name, as even many personal names are genderless. The ortography is dreadful, with no separation between words and letters superposed by two or three, which makes difficult to computerize tibetan texts. However this does not forbid the Tibetans to also have developped a brillant civilization.

So languages are arbitrary and haphazardous constructions over history. I wondered if it really was possible to create a completely artificial hyper-rationalized language, free of any complex ad arbitrarian rules. It is even not obvious that such an ultra-simplified language would be really simpler to learn and to use, it could even contain many confusions. Attempts to build such a language existed, such as the Esperanto, but it simply copied existing european languages, borrowing etymologies from the various european languages in a very arbitrarian way, even the "quotas" are arbitrary.

I tried to simply build a rationalized alphabet. Such an alphabet would be based on an analysis of the relations between the various consonants. But I stepped on two issues:
-even for simple sounds like "t" or "d" there are strong variations between languages and cultures. For istance the english "t" sounds somewhat "tch" for a french ear, and the german "d" sounds as a "t" to a french ear.
-we can build several different and contradictory classifications of letters. Say in a mathematical way, all the letters are linear combinations of a subset of letters, but we can do this with many other subsets. In an axiomatic way, any subset of letters can be the "axioms" for building all the others. So, at any moment, when designing a lettering system, there will be some arbitrarions classification. So learning such a system may be complex, or there may be one hundred letters.

There are however attempts to build such lettering systems:
-the elvish alphabets designed by Tolkien, which could be a good example of a rationalized lettering system. They howeved show many abusive simplifications, which are relevant only for the peculiar language they have to convey. And they even evolved in time, like real languages...
-We can too trace the creation of the tibetan alphabet in the 8th century. It is still some rationalized creation, but adapted from the sanscript and simplified to fit tibetan language, its structures and rules. And this rationalization led, in many cases, to a complex orthography.

With all this we still not have answered the question "he" or "she".
I think there is no answer. In French, it is "he". In English, it is "she", derived from the sailor's ancient habit to say "she" for their old wooden ships. Where does this habit comes from?
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
JRehling
post Jun 25 2005, 07:30 PM
Post #3


Senior Member
****

Group: Members
Posts: 2530
Joined: 20-April 05
Member No.: 321



QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Jun 24 2005, 11:49 PM)
So languages are arbitrary and haphazardous constructions over history. I wondered if it really was possible to create a completely artificial hyper-rationalized language, free of any complex ad arbitrarian rules. It is even not obvious that such an ultra-simplified language would be really simpler to learn and to use, it could even contain many confusions. Attempts to build such a language existed, such as the Esperanto, but it simply copied existing european languages, borrowing etymologies from the various european languages in a very arbitrarian way, even the "quotas" are arbitrary.
*


Very good points and information, Richard.

I'd like to say of language that it is, importantly, designed for human beings to use it, not vintage 1985 AI programs. Where it is arbitrary, some human capacity or other allows it to be arbitrary.

Of course, the very words for things, in every language, are almost always arbitrary. (An example of an exception: sound-words like "pop".) Why "dog" and not "chien" or "popo"? This is not irrationality, but almost surely a useful design feature, enabling people to create new terms in response to varied environments (of what use would a standard term for "dog" be to a people that lived on an island with emus, but no dogs?). Some interesting work has been done by a professor of mine, Mike Gasser, showing how important it is to have word-naming be arbitrary.

So take, for example, Allen Newell's "Model Human Processor" and remember that human short term memory is very limited (in capacity as well as time span) whereas human long term memory is almost unlimited in capacity (given enough rehearsals/item). Take Zipf's "Law" as the distribution of term frequencies. Consider that content/time is a goal, but redundancy is useful to eliminate acoustical ambiguities. And, the fact that human "common sense" disambiguates many logical ambiguities -- to an extent.

At the end, I think you'll find that language is a good solution to the constraints and abilities of human speakers and listeners. Where it is arbitrary, don't confuse what is arbitrary with madness or mistaken design. Finally, note that even ambiguity serves its purpose, as a coquette, a politician, or an author like James Joyce knows well.

QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Jun 24 2005, 11:49 PM)
With all this we still not have answered the question "he" or "she".
I think there is no answer. In French, it is "he". In English, it is "she", derived from the sailor's ancient habit to say "she" for their old wooden ships. Where does this habit comes from?
*


Sociologically, I note that in male-dominated enterprises, particularly ones like war or sea voyages that isolated men from women, men could choose to put female labels on objects as a way of (humorously?) putting a salve on the fact that no women would be present. For example, in the movie Full Metal Jacket, US Marines (in a relatively genderless language) are told to give their rifle a female name. This is not primarily a language issue, although it becomes one.

In French (German, Russian, and other IndoEuropean languages), gender based on words rather than objects can step in. If a language has a masculine noun for an object, then masculine pronouns are used, sometimes even if the noun is never actually articulated. Of course, a language like French may have more than one word for "ship". Whichever gender is used for a ship, I would suspect that it is either the grammatical gender of the current primary noun for ship, or the grammatical gender of a formerly-popular noun for ship.

To go back to my puzzles from before, I don't know if there is a right answer to the "Japanese" problem.

The use of indirect objects before verbs seems to be arbitrary, but almost all verbs that permit it are of Anglo-Saxon, and not French origin! This reflects the fact that Anglo-Saxon had such a grammatical structure for all verbs (as German does today), whereas French does not (when the noun, instead of the pronoun, is used).

There are rules for which adjectives can take -er, and once you have those three rules, I know of only one exception. Monosyllables and bisyllabic adjectives ending in -y can take -er. Trisyllabic adjectives and bisyllabics not ending in -y should take "more". The exception is "fun". And, yes, I'm sure that not all people perform according to these rules, but they come pretty close!
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post

Posts in this topic
- Tman   Rovers - He Or She?   Jun 21 2005, 07:41 AM
- - Nix   Are they not both gals? Nico   Jun 21 2005, 07:43 AM
|- - dvandorn   Technically, of course, they're asexual, and t...   Jun 21 2005, 07:56 AM
- - djellison   Both girls imho Doug   Jun 21 2005, 08:29 AM
- - wyogold   QUOTE (Tman @ Jun 21 2005, 07:41 AM)No kiddin...   Jun 21 2005, 09:11 AM
|- - RedSky   QUOTE (wyogold @ Jun 21 2005, 04:11 AM)somebo...   Jun 21 2005, 10:05 PM
- - Tman   If I check between, when looking intimately, I wou...   Jun 21 2005, 09:31 AM
- - mike   They're both genderless. Until we create mach...   Jun 21 2005, 05:03 PM
|- - Deimos   QUOTE (mike @ Jun 21 2005, 05:03 PM)They...   Jun 21 2005, 06:11 PM
|- - dvandorn   Exactly -- just try telling the French that someth...   Jun 21 2005, 07:02 PM
|- - Phillip   Well, as a French-American, I must point out that ...   Jun 21 2005, 07:23 PM
||- - mike   Say that the rovers are male or female if you like...   Jun 21 2005, 07:36 PM
||- - dvandorn   Yes, English got the concept of neuter pronouns fr...   Jun 21 2005, 07:55 PM
||- - mike   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 21 2005, 11:55 AM)Oppy,...   Jun 21 2005, 09:16 PM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 21 2005, 08:02 PM)And y...   Jun 22 2005, 05:58 AM
|- - Borek   QUOTE (helvick @ Jun 22 2005, 05:58 AM)Just w...   Jun 24 2005, 10:56 AM
- - djellison   Moving a few posts   Jun 21 2005, 10:00 PM
- - hendric   Mike, Oh come on, anything that 1. Stops talk...   Jun 22 2005, 02:42 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (dvandorn)But in a very real sense, these pl...   Jun 22 2005, 05:57 AM
- - djellison   Yup - Vessels of exploration are always female D...   Jun 22 2005, 07:18 AM
- - edstrick   Would it then be: Ms Opportunity and Ms Spirit? ...   Jun 22 2005, 07:31 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Jun 22 2005, 07:31 AM)Would...   Jun 22 2005, 08:33 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 21 2005 @ 08:02 PM)Ame...   Jun 22 2005, 08:48 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Jun 22 2005, 01:48 A...   Jun 22 2005, 05:33 PM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 22 2005, 06:33 PM)...ge...   Jun 22 2005, 08:54 PM
|- - JRehling   There is a wide variety in terms of how compr...   Jun 22 2005, 09:39 PM
|- - helvick   Nice response. The specific "choice" o...   Jun 22 2005, 10:16 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (helvick @ Jun 22 2005, 03:16 PM)For th...   Jun 22 2005, 10:28 PM
|- - helvick   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 22 2005, 11:28 PM)Doug ...   Jun 22 2005, 10:36 PM
- - djellison   Hands up - I actually got complaints about this st...   Jun 22 2005, 09:07 AM
- - edstrick   Trigaux said "..... Some among the greatest s...   Jun 22 2005, 09:24 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (edstrick @ Jun 22 2005, 09:24 AM)Decad...   Jun 22 2005, 05:19 PM
- - dvandorn   I'm sorry, I guess I haven't stated my poi...   Jun 23 2005, 04:55 AM
|- - Richard Trigaux   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 23 2005, 04:55 AM)As a ...   Jun 23 2005, 07:01 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 22 2005, 09:55 PM)I...   Jun 23 2005, 09:20 AM
- - dvandorn   Very nice analysis, JRehling. I really enjoy the ...   Jun 24 2005, 03:53 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 24 2005, 08:53 AM)Very ...   Jun 24 2005, 05:30 PM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 24 2005, 12:30 PM)The b...   Jun 24 2005, 06:46 PM
- - tty   Be glad you don't have to learn Swedish. The u...   Jun 24 2005, 08:31 PM
- - Richard Trigaux   what I think is that languages are historical buil...   Jun 25 2005, 06:49 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Jun 24 2005, 11:49 P...   Jun 25 2005, 07:30 PM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jun 25 2005, 02:30 PM)...Of...   Jun 25 2005, 09:02 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 25 2005, 02:02 PM)The I...   Jun 25 2005, 10:15 PM
- - Pavel   I don't know about Eskimo, but English has lot...   Jul 4 2005, 11:40 PM


Reply to this topicStart new topic

 



RSS Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 19th March 2024 - 03:33 AM
RULES AND GUIDELINES
Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting.

IMAGE COPYRIGHT
Images posted on UnmannedSpaceflight.com may be copyrighted. Do not reproduce without permission. Read here for further information on space images and copyright.

OPINIONS AND MODERATION
Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators.
SUPPORT THE FORUM
Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member.