Human Language:
An Owner's Manual
Everything you
always wanted to know about language,
but the experts
couldn't tell you
Table of Contents
Prologue: A Chapter-by-Chapter Overview
Why This Owner's Manual Is Overdue
How Well Does Language Actually Work?
Where Did Language Come From, Anyway?
A Simpler Version of Chapter Three
Who Were the First Linguists?
Where Does Language End and
Knowledge Begin?
Famous Student Bloopers
Where Did Translators Come From?
Famous Translation Bloopers by
Man and Computer
Are Computers and Language Truly Compatible?
Can Learning a Foreign Language
Be Easy?
What Are the Diseases of Language?
Treating and Curing the Diseases
of Language
A Brief Overview of Recent Linguistics
What Is the True Size and Shape
of Language?
Is There a Unit for Measuring Language?
Language and Belief
Concluding Remarks
Book Summary
With its accent on solving
practical problems in everyday life,
Human Language: An Owner's Manual
shows not only how
language works but also how you
can use it to enhance your
own personal and business
relationships. Written entirely in an
easy-to-follow Question and
Answer format and further
enriched with humor and personal anecdotes,
An Owner's Manual offers
an intimate and immensely
readable overview of language
from its origins and
earliest days to the latest developments
in electronic language applications.
The author's broad practical
experience in many language fields--writing,
radio announcing, editing,
translating, teaching, theatre consulting,
creating and evaluating language
software, and scholarly achievements--
permit him to avoid the dense
thicket of academic jargon and cut through
to the working realities of
language today.
Further enrichment is provided by
the author's
many published pieces and
computer programs
freely available from his
website, where readers
may also receive his answers to
their questions.
This manual offers a fresh
perspective on language and is intended for
anyone who is curious about how
it really functions but may have been
discouraged by formal works on
the subject.
Several sections are humorous in
tone, including a chapter on "Famous
Translation Bloopers" and a
piece on the history of language entitled
"Spray It Again,
Sam." Along the way, the author also offers many
insights into improving one's
English and learning a foreign
language, and he even provides us
with a convenient
measuring unit we can all use to
find our path
through the labyrinth of language.
This book does for language what
David Reuben's "Everything
You Always Wanted to Know About
Sex" did for human sexuality.
Just a few highlights from the book:
Human language is directly
related to animal language,
but not in the way anyone thought.
There are specific exercises you
can use to write more clearly
and to protect yourself from
language scams, communication
gaps, information storms, and
other disorders of language.
Computers and language are
basically incompatible because they
function according to quite
different principles of handling information.
This failure of course explains
many past shortcomings in this
field, including machine
translation, voicewriters, and others.
It is perfectly feasible to
create a map of human language as well
as a measuring unit that can
quantify differences between statements,
arguments, and negotiating
positions. But neither the map nor the
measuring unit will help
computers to handle language more capably.
Learning to speak good English is
much harder than educators
will admit. Learning to
write English is harder still.
The basic structural principle underlying language is not grammar.
Unquestioning reliance on ancient
authorities that grammar could
play such a role may rank as a
major error in the history of science.
Translating may be far harder
than anyone had imagined.
It may be the one field of
learning where two thousand years
have brought no real advances.
Some bilingualism could be
helpful for society.
But total bilingualism would be a
total disaster.
When those frequently portrayed
creatures from outer space
finally get here, we may not have
a ghost of a chance of
understanding what they are
telling us.
A More In-Depth Overview of This Book
1. Why This Owner’s
Manual Is Overdue
Its Question and Answer format
distinguishes it from all other books
on language.* This first chapter describes
some of the themes to be examined
in later ones:
the physicality of language, just as
important as its cognitive side;
the sheer centrality of language
to everything we do;
the suggestive links between human
and animal communication;
how we can all make language work
better for us in our daily lives.
The convergence of these various themes
also sets this book apart
from most previous books about language.
The many articles and specialized papers
freely available on the
author’s website at
any time offer a supplement
to the information in the manual.
A feedback device and an on-line
discussion group
make it possible to contact the author
with further questions.
*Far
from being a mere literary device,
this Q & A
format permits the author
to introduce
and answer
the most
probing questions he has heard
over the years
from colleagues
in many fields.
2. How Well Does Language
Actually Work?
(And What Does It Actually Do?)
Contrary to popular and intuitive beliefs,
language is not primarily a
mental, intellectual,
logical, or mathematical process—and
least of all a grammatical one.
It is primarily a physical, even a
biological process, and shares
the common goals
of other biological processes:
finding food, shelter, or a mate,
ultimately seeking survival.
In so doing, it can also fulfill
many other kinds of needs, including
life-enhancing and
individualistic impulses.
The true functions and goals of language
go far beyond merely
communicating “information”
and include having fun, feeling important,
reaching out for compromise, and dreaming
of a better world.
Perhaps the most important
function of language
is making “small talk,”
which may be the ultimate glue
that holds society together. And
learning to speak
a foreign language may well have
more in common with learning to
catch a ball
than with mere grammatical perfection.
3. Where Did Language Come
From, Anyway?
There has been no end to theories
attempting to answer this question,
and over the past twenty years experts
from dozens of highly technical fields
have come up with some truly
ingenious explanations.
But none of their theories may be
open to ultimate scientific proof.
And yet, provided we accept
that no final proof may ever be forthcoming,
the most likely answer may have been
lying out in clear sight all along.
Thanks to abundant recent research,
we now know a fair amount about how
many animals are likely to communicate.
We also know in abundant detail
how human beings communicate.
We can most probably deduce
a great deal about how language arose
by engaging in a thoughtful and detailed
process of “connecting the dots”
between these two processes:
animal and human communication.
This chapter describes many of
the current
theories along with their shortcomings
and presents the case for the
author’s solution
in a cautious, responsible, and
credible manner.
4. A Simpler Version of
Chapter Three
(Spray It Again, Sam)
Employing humor and a stylized vocabulary
common to fables and parables,
this chapter provides a different perspective
on the prehistoric events
covered in the preceding chapter.
Here the long transition period
between earlier
and later animals—and also
between bands of apes
moving in search of food and
migrating bands of
humans—is portrayed in a
scenario that telescopes time,
embracing the gradual abandonment
of animal sounds,
the development of early language,
and even the invention of writing
and the arrival of translators
and interpreters on the scene.
5. Who Were the First Linguists?
This section describes
the early history and development
of language
and relates how the first
interpreter-priests may have
helped to build both languages
and language structures,
including the earliest names and
terms of respect,
oaths, curses, insults, prayers,
and interjections.
It also explains why such systems
would have been in the long-term interest
of social groups possessing them
and have favored their survival
over groups that lacked them.
And how these attempts at language-building
may have been repeated many times
and have often ended in partial
or total failure
before they finally became
the definitive means of human communication.
Three forms of evidence are presented
to support this account.
6. Where Does Language End and
Knowledge Begin?
Many points of view about the links
between language and knowledge,
spanning eras and cultures,
are presented, leading to the
tentative conclusion
that the connection between them
may be closer
than theoretical linguists and
language engineers
have cared to consider. Their relationship
suggests the existence of a
three-way model
involving language, knowledge,
and reality
(as a feedback mechanism
clarifying the first two)
as the basis for human experience.
Also presented are examples
of alternative communication systems
currently being advanced by
linguists and AI scientists.
Much current thinking about language
comes in for debunking, including
the related notions
that language can be based on logic
or that logic can be represented
by the grammar of our languages.
7. Famous Student Bloopers
Based on a rediscovered piece by
Mark Twain,
this humorous chapter comprised
of actual quotes
from school assignments shows
that there has been no real advance
in language education over the
past 120 years.
This does not mean that students
are—or have ever
been—hopelessly stupid.
The reasons for such failure may
well spring
not from the inadequacy of either
our students
or our educational system
but from inevitable problems
arising from our decision as a species
to adopt spoken and written language
as our means of communication.
8. Where Did Translators Come From?
As prehistory slowly merged into written
history, translators gradually emerged
from the tradition of interpreter-priests
described in Chapter 5. Far from
playing a humble role
in human cultural development,
translators have almost
inevitably presided
over most exchanges of knowledge
from one society to another
throughout the historical period.
They were
simply the only ones in a position
to perform this task.
Or in the words of Giordano Bruno,
“From translation all
science had its offspring.”
An experiment demonstrates
that all use of language is subject
to precisely the same shortcomings
long ascribed to translation alone.
A set of diagrams clearly proves
that all languages often tend to express
even the simplest and seemingly
most synonymous notions
in remarkably different ways.
These findings make it highly unlikely
that anything like a
“universal grammar”
or a “global glossary of concepts”
can ever be developed.
9. Famous Translation Bloopers by Man and Computer
This humorous section spells out
the serious conclusions of the
previous chapter
with unrestrained gaiety. Here
the quotations
consist of disastrously mistaken translations
of everyday, commercial, and
technical passages,
all of them cited and attested
by practicing language professionals.
10. Are Computers and Language
Truly Compatible?
Computer code must be logically
true and correct,
or it will not run, even if it makes
no sense at all in everyday terms.
Language rarely succeeds in being
strictly logical—rather, it
is at its best
in approaching the truth, with a
fair amount
of leeway for error built in and
even expected.
And yet it can often end up
making a fair amount of sense
to those who use it.
This contrast alone warns us
that the answer to the above question
may quite often be a negative one.
Many examples proving this point
are presented, most of them well-known
computer applications: grammar-checkers,
style-checkers, spell-checkers, machine
translation, voice-writing, paraphrasing
English texts, natural language interfaces,
among others.
It also turns out that not even
the well-known failures
of artificial intelligence may
suffice to explain
the inadequacy of much technical documentation—
the real reason may well lie in
the reluctance
of our computer engineers to
discuss their projects
in any detail with the technical writers
assigned to helping them.
11. Can Learning a Foreign Language Be Easy?
A heart-to-heart talk with readers,
exploring their reasons for
learning a foreign language
and providing many useful hints
for those who wish to do so
on various levels. Many of these hints
can also be helpful in improving
one's English.
12. What Are the Diseases of Language?
This chapter shows clearly how
the physicality
of language, largely ignored by
previous scholars,
can spill over into biology and
even forms of illness.
It describes in objective
clinical terms
some twenty different
“diseases of language”
and even provides a comparative table
illustrating their differential diagnosis,
including underlying causes,
symptoms, usual
age of onset, and in many cases
useful treatment
strategies as well.
These conditions vary in severity
from the “tip
of the tongue” phenomenon
(the linguistic
equivalent of the sneeze), to literal-mindedness,
fear of speaking in public,
and “cyclorrhea” or
talking in circles.
More serious conditions such as
language storms and language spasms
are also examined.
13. Treating and Curing the
Diseases of Language
Avoiding Language
Scams—Finding Practical Solutions
Essentially a continuation of the
previous chapter,
this section concentrates on ways
readers can become aware of the
early symptoms
of language diseases and do everything
in their power to resist their onset.
It shows how cultivating a
skeptical attitude
in most areas of life can protect us
against literal-mindedness
and automatic acceptance of rules.
It further identifies two species
of “language
scams”—those aimed at
extracting money from you
and those present in language itself—
and shows you how to resist them.
Whether someone wants to persuade you
to name a star after your girlfriend
or to assure you that “better
English”
is certain to change your life,
this chapter can help you to choose
the best course of action.
14. A Brief Overview of Recent Linguistics
This section opens up the mysteries
of theoretical and applied linguistics
and reveals why much recent
“news” in the field
has come to resemble
victory announcements or press releases.
It identifies the real heroes of
language study
and relates the vicious attacks
that have been launched against
one of those heroes.
It also briefly discusses the financial
underpinnings of this field. Many different
linguistic theories are summarized,
and the chapter concludes by
introducing four “laws of linguistics.”
15. What Is the True Size and Shape of Language?
The four laws introduced in the
previous chapter
are discussed in some detail and
open out
into considerations of the
ultimate boundaries
of language in its largest sense—historical,
prehistorical, perhaps even extra-terrestrial.
The totality of language is shown
to be at least
as infinite as fractals in motion
and can readily approach the complexity
of astronomy and microbiology,
even of mathematics itself.
On a less exalted level, we discover
that human beings may live within language
somewhat as a family of woodchucks
lives within its system of tunnels.
16. Is There a Unit for Measuring Language?
The answer to this question is
unhesitatingly positive.
The unit is described, named, and immediately
put to work to measure the distances
between statements, arguments,
and negotiating
positions. The properties of this
measuring system
are set forth in precise terms,
and its potential
for making many aspects of language
more comprehensible is explored.
This system also turns out to be
the basic structural principle
underlying language,
thus supplanting grammar,
which had been mistakenly imagined
to play this role. Perhaps most remarkably,
part of the basis for this discovery
has lain plainly within our field
of vision
for the past 150 years, but throughout
this time it has gone unrecognized.
17. Language and Belief
Following up on the distinction
between language,
knowledge, and reality discussed
in Chapter 6,
this section discusses the relationship
between various systems of belief
and our ultimate understanding of
the world.
Religious, political, and even
scientific belief systems
are examined and compared from a linguistic
point of view against the background
of recent outbreaks of fanaticism
and violent acts supposedly justified
by such belief systems. An attempt
is made to determine what all
such systems
may or may not have in common
in terms of language. All the preceding
chapters have been completed, but this
chapter and the next one are
still being written.
18. Concluding Remarks
The various strands of the book
are brought together and clarified
in their totality. This chapter
exists so far
as a few opening paragraphs
followed by some fairly complete notes.
The author is awaiting reactions
from pre-publication readers
before writing the final version.
The above summary and overview are:
Copyright (c) 2002 by
Alexander Gross
All Rights Reserved
Todas Derechas Reservadas
Publisher's
queries welcomed at:
language@sprynet.com
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