TGD View about Language

Abstract

Human languages differ dramatically from their analogs for animals. Animal languages consist mainly of simple signals, warnings and threats for instance. The emotional expression dominates. There seems to be no grammar. Birds can have repertoire of different song patterns and monkeys have gesture language. There is a huge variety of human languages. One can also regard music as a kind language expressing emotions and creating them. Also pictures define linguistic representations. Children and animals learn speech by mimicry and the grammar and syntax without conscious efforts. Human language is also special in that it involves conceptualization, metaphors, and analogies representing abstract concepts in terms of objects and actions of the external world. One might understand the semantic aspect of language in terms of association and conditioning. Language acquisition involves showing the object and saying the word describing it. This suggests conditioning and association so that a mere word generates an imagined percept of the object. Conditioning and formation of associations is a very general form of learning assumed to relate to the increase of synaptic strengths leading to a generation of association pathways. In computer science pattern recognition and completion models it mathematically.