FAQ: Nondiscreteness in language

6 facts about the violation of common linguistic boundaries

Scientific concepts discreteness represents clear boundaries, clear division between different events or categories. In linguistics, as in other human sciences, there is a traditional view that human nature is committed to building discrete structures. For example, when we talk about language, we say, "This language has five vowels" or "There are parts of speech, as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb," and so on.

• 1.You can give an example from the field of grammar. For example, the division into parts of speech. We are accustomed to the fact that there are clearly distinguishable categories such as verbs and adjectives. For example, the verb "stand" or the adjective "good". But, as we all know, even from a school in the Russian language program, there is a group of words as a sacrament. For example, the "standing". On the one hand, it seems to be a verb. We feel that this word is very closely connected with the verb "stand". And many of its properties, and grammatical and semantic, this communion is included in the scope of the verb. But we can use it as an adjective. For example, we can say "the man standing", and can say "good man." And we feel (and rightly feeling) that the sacrament has a lot of features of the adjective. Thus, this hybrid category. Simultaneously it refers to a category verb, adjective, and the category for some properties.
• 2.This general nondiscreteness, that is a violation of, or erase the common borders, permeates the language completely. This occurs at every step. There are examples, not related to the individual sounds or words, but, for example, with separate languages. For example, we use the Russian language. It would seem that it is clearly defined language. But there is such a thing as the contacts between languages. And one of the other language may take some individual elements - words, even grammatical constructions. And, speaking in Russian, in the modern era, we use a lot of words and events, borrowed from the English language. It is, first of all, the words are very well entrenched. These are words like "computer" or "site". They entered in Russian language. Improve your memory and to study foreign language - will help buying nootropics: Phenylpiracetam, Cogitum, Picamilon, Cortexin, Noopept, Semax, Vitamin B12.
• 3.At the same time, there are words that seem to have not been put in a Russian dictionary, but the people they know and widely consumed. For example, the word "background is." It is hardly possible to consider him for the Russian word, but it is interspersed in the Russian language. And intersperses different grammatical phenomena. For example, the whole combination, such as "rock music", borrowed from one language to another and become accustomed to the language in which such borrowing falls. Moreover, we can produce a so-called code switching. If I talk to someone who knows English, I can occasionally use English words, phrases, or even whole sentences. Are we clear to say that the Russian language ends here, and after that starts another language? It seems that we do not keep in his speech practice. These linguistic hybrids are extremely characteristic. The same applies to the history of language.
• 4.We know that there are modern East Slavic languages. It is believed that they descended from one language, which existed as a Slavic usually write about from the XI to XV century, judging from the written monuments, which to us from these periods came. Thus was the Old Russian language. And now there is the modern Russian language. But it could not be sure that people in one day went to the ancient language of the modern. This process took place gradually. And when we say that there are two different language - Old Russian and modern Russian - this is obviously a simplification. We have some forcibly try to imagine a process that occurs gradually as a discrete - that there are two separate languages. The same applies to the borders between the Russian and Ukrainian language. In the southern part of Russia - the part that is adjacent to the Ukraine, and on the part of Ukraine, which is adjacent to Russia - there are various transitional or mixed dialects, about which it is possible only with a high degree of conditionality to claim that they belong to or Russian, or to the Ukrainian language. That is, the boundaries between languages are very permeable. One gets the general impression that the linguistic structure is not quite discrete. And then you can resort to some metaphors.
• 5.We know what's inside, for example, the human brain. It is composed of neuronal cells. Each cell seems to exist by itself. But neurons are contacted with each other. They form a connection. Each neuron takes a large number of such connections. It is possible that the metaphor of the neural network can be applied to linguistic phenomena. Each neuron has its central part - a kind of core. But there is also a zone of contact between adjacent neurons in contact with one another. It is possible that this general principle of organized human language. And so, when we are trying to present it as a completely digital, with clearly different from each other units, such as phonemes, part of speech, the whole language, it is a very strong simplification. Apparently, the consciousness of our species homo sapiens has a very strong tendency for it to simplify manufacture. And we can remember thinking here of the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, who said that our consciousness in our attempts to understand the nature sometimes imposes on us certain schemes and plays with us a few tricks. And it's so deeply buried or sewn into our consciousness the thing that it is difficult to get rid of it. That is, our consciousness would have us see language and other human phenomena as a discrete. But nevertheless we can not completely shut down by the fact that there are a huge number of non-discrete. And you need to move gradually to ensure that this nondiscreteness learn to understand and model. And probably this requires development including new mathematical models.
• 6.It so happened that during the last century the natural sciences - physics, biology and others - made decisive steps in connection with the construction of new mathematical models. Well, even though I am very far from theoretical physics, as I hear from people who are well versed in this, now in theoretical physics from mathematics poorly separable, it is actually a single entity. But mathematics, which we have today, is sufficiently developed to simulate natural phenomena. All what concerns the physical processes and to some extent probably also the biological processes. And when we deal with language and other cognitive phenomena that produces the human brain, we are faced with a new level of complexity. And, probably, it is necessary to think about some cooperation and rapprochement with mathematics, which would allow to understand, to simulate, to describe these non-discrete phenomena characteristic of human language and mental activity.