Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: mstede@cs.toronto.edu (Manfred Stede)
Subject: Re: Prototypes [was Re: typology of Esperanto]
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 26 Aug 92 14:47:21 GMT

pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky) writes:

>In article <c_bnap+@lynx.unm.edu> lgorbet@carina.unm.edu (Larry P Gorbet ANTHROPOLOGY) writes:
>>
>>It is not obvious from your post just what kind of ontological status you
>>are assuming for "categories".  That is, just what do you believe
>>categories are that we are deciding what belongs to?  That's not a
>>rhettorical question.  It is not clear, if one is talking psychology or
>>neurology, how one makes a principled distinction between "categories" 
>>and "the results of the process of categorization".  Isn't a view of
>>categories as "classical" sets also about "our ability to decide what
>>belongs in what category:  given some set of necessary and sufficient
>>conditions for membership or given an exhaustive listing (or some 
>>combination thereof), isn't that just a "way to decide what belongs".

>Not at all.  Suppose, for example, we have a mental category "Germanic
>language" which is defined as "all and only those languages that use
>morphmes descended from Proto-Germanic for 90% of the terms on some word
>list (e.g. Swadesh)".  Now suppose we have another category "Romance"
>with a similar definition. Granted, a stupid definition, but let's
>assume it for the sake of the example.

>Now suppose we are asked "is English Germanic or is it Romance".  I
>might be quite happy to answer "neither".  But if forced, there is an
>obvious metric under which it's *closer* to Germanic than to Romance.
>So I hesitate for a second, remember that I have to give some answer,
>none of the above isn't an answer, besides, that would be unhelpful, so
>I say "Germanic".  Even if I'm not being given a forced choice
>inventory, there may be an implied forced choice, since it's more useful
>to give the closest category than to give no answer at all.  Presto, we
>have the results Lakoff discusses, but the fuzziness is now all in the
>metric of "closeness" and not at all in the category itself.

I agree that in this example the 'metric of closeness' is the central
matter, but only because your category is suitably defined:  A language
where >90% of the morphemes descend from some other language.  Since
this criterion is somewhat tedious to verify in practice, you use your
intuitive ability to estimate when asked the category membership question.

Nevertheless, the metric becomes the decisive issue only if you have a
clear definition of the category, as for "germanic language" above.
The discussion calls for bringing up the old Wittgensteinian example
of 'game', where we just don't have that clear definition, i.e. in terms
of necessary and sufficient conditions (or cf. the picture of the
whole variety of cups and vases brought up by, I think, Labov in the
early 70s).  And in the absence of that, we can't shift the burden of the 
categorization task to a closeness metric.  If we can't define the category, 
how can we define the metric?


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Manfred Stede                                 mstede@cs.toronto.edu				
Dept. of Computer Science                      o              
University of Toronto                         <\ 
Toronto M5S 1A4, Canada                       />   
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Newsgroups: sci.lang