Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Tue, 10 Nov 1992 13:53:16 EST
From:         "Bruce E. Nevin" <bnevin@CCB.BBN.COM>
Subject:      re: marking

[From: Bruce Nevin (Tue 921110 12:59:20)]

(From Bill Powers (921109.1100) ) --

Re "marking" something as having been said, I think as Martin has
suggested in his Layered Protocol model of communication that we control
for a perception of the other party having understood.

The universe of perceptions is not linear, but speech is.

The universe of perceptions is not linear, that is, the ensemble of
pathways for shifting attention consecutively from one perception to
another that is in some PCT-internal sense "adjacent" forms some sort of
network or mesh, not a linear sequence.

Yet when we talk about these perceptions, we must use a linear sequence
of words (some of them reduced in form so as to appear as parts of
words).  This means that we must linearize some particular traversal of
the net or mesh of perceptions.  Or, commonly, successive traversals
with returns to common nodes represented as repeated words (often
reduced to pronouns, zero, etc.).

It seems clear that we control for a given traversal of "adjacent"
perceptions having been talked about: instead of repeating the traversal
in words, we use one of the reduced forms (e.g. "this is why thus and
so," where "this" is a reduced form of words already uttered, and
corresponds to the same traversal of perceptions that those words
referred to.)

Given that we also control for perceiving that a given traversal of
has perceptions been understood by the other, such a perception is often
grounds for producing reduced forms of words in an utterance, even
though their unreduced forms had not actually been previously spoken.

In the analysis of language form (hold your nose Bill, I'm not so far
from perceptual control as you might think), you get a more efficient
system if you postulate a requirement for word repetition across
conjunctions.  This provides a basis for reconstructing intervening
sentences conjoined under "and" that (ex hypotheosi) had been zeroed
because they were common knowledge.  Thus:

  Don't forget your umbrella, it's Wednesday. <==

  Don't forget your umbrella, because you use an umbrella when it rains,
  and the paper said it would rain tomorrow, and you might come back
  tomorrow if you miss the train, and you sometimes miss the train when
  you have a late meeting, and you have a late meeting Wednesdays, and
  today is Wednesday.

It seems to me that we use the socially learned structure of language as
an framework for organizing how our attention traverses our perceptions
(the combination of perceptions from the environment with perceptions
from memory and imagination).  It seems also that the hierarchical
organization of perception strongly informs the operator-argument
structure of language, as you have suggested, Bill (relationship words
for relationship perceptions, etc.).  However, that correspondence is
muddled by the existence of phrases that correspond apparently to
unitary perceptions (frozen expressions, idioms, etc.), diverse
perceptions for the same word or phrase (polysemy, homophony), and so
forth, but above all because language is a learned, conventional system
of social agreements, and the universe of nonverbal perceptions is not.

In our speech, we mark something as "I assume that you already perceive
this" by producing only reduced forms of the words for it.  We use this
in really quite subtle ways to test and confirm (co-affirm) ongoing
agreements.  This is one not entirely obvious way that the constraints
and conventions of language become a very important tool for creating
social agreements.

We control for creating and sustaining social agreements.  Failure of
social agreements is probably occasion for intrinsic error in mammals
(possibly in other creatures as well).

	Bruce
	bn@bbn.com
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