Dark Matter of the Mind

by Daniel L. Everett

  For example, Goldin-Meadow (2015) argues that homesigners develop symbols for objects, word-ordering constraints, part-whole relationships of gestures (i.e., compositionality, where a single gesture, she claims, can be broken down into separate parts, just as a word can be broken into morphemes); that gestures can fill slots in larger structures; that there is evidence for hierarchical structuring of homesigners’ utterances; that homesigners use gestures to mark different modes, such as negation and interrogation; that homesigners use their gestures communicatively; and that some categories in the world are grammaticalized according to patterns we see in all or many human languages (e.g., homesigners’ use of gestures for size and shape but not gestures for hardness, texture, temperature, weight). She discusses other characteristics of homesigners’ gestures, but these are sufficient for showing the potential problems of her approach.

  First, note that all of these characteristics evolved, so at some point humans learned them before natural selection could have used them for determining relative fitness. Second, none of these characteristics are specific to language. Symbols—unless we are using this term in the strict Peircian sense, as we have seen, are used in one way or another by several species. But even if the reference is to Peirce’s theory of the symbol as a conventionalized connection between form and meaning, then much like Saussure’s signs, there is no reason to believe that this cannot be learned easily by humans. In fact, on one interpretation, this is all that Goldin-Meadow’s results on symbols show us—namely, that children readily adopt symbols. The object is a form with a meaning. As the child learns the object and desires to communicate, this desire to communicate perhaps the most striking characteristic of our species—whether an interactional instinct or an emotional urge—the child will iconically represent the object, and the meaning of the object in the particular culture comes along for the ride. Children participate in their parents’ lives and try to communicate, even if without language, as Helen Keller’s remarkable odyssey shows us. With an ability to see or hear or feel, the child can receive input from the environment, from its caretakers, and in fact will, with most caretakers and in most environments. Learning the use of the object and the salience of the object to their parents and environment, children communicate about objects, as most other species (at least, mammals) do. Whole objects, as perceivable in a particular space in time, are most salient and learned relatively easily by dogs, humans, and other creatures. Humans try to represent their objects, unlike other animals, because humans strive to communicate.

  The fact that some features of the objects stand out to children is likewise unsurprising, though the particular reason that shape and size win out over many other features, if Goldin-Meadow (2015) is correct, is not yet clear. She ascribes it to the child’s native endowment. But I would suggest looking first at the way that objects are used, presented, structured, and valued in the examples of the child’s caretakers. Furniture, dishes, houses, tools, and so on, are far more easily arranged and far more prevalent in the environment of caretakers’ salient objects than other features. At least that could be tested, and there is no suggestion that any such tests were contemplated.

  With regard to the claim that homesigners’ speech is organized hierarchically, there are two caveats. First, as I have argued in my own work (D. Everett 2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009a, 2012a, 2012b, and others), hierarchy and parataxis are difficult to tease apart. Either may be misinterpreted as the other, and they are often confused due to what might be seen as theoretical. For example, in Pirahã utterances, we might say, “The man is here. He is tall.” Or “I spoke. You are coming.” And these could be interpreted as “The man who is tall is here” or “I said that you are coming.” But the analysis is likely much simpler, with the syntax lacking hierarchical structure. In none of Goldin-Meadow’s examples purporting to show hierarchical structure in homesigners’ utterances, did I see convincing evidence for hierarchy. The second caveat is that hierarchy is a natural solution independent of language, and thus if one finds hierarchical organization in some language structures, this is not evidence that there is an innate linguistic bias. As information demands grow due to increasing societal complexity, hierarchy is the most efficient solution to information organization, across many domains (Simon 1962). Atoms, universes, and many other complex objects of nature are organized hierarchically. Hierarchies are found in automobiles, canine behaviors, and computer filing systems. It is a naturally occurring and observable solution. In fact, for any action that involves selectional constraints, such that you must do x before you do y, there is hierarchy. There is absolutely nothing special to language.

  The ordering that homesigners are claimed to impose on their structures is mundane. First, they have no alternative but to put their symbols in some order. And since the main ingredients of any utterance are the thing being reported about and what happened to it—what has long been called theme-rheme or topic-comment—the topic will usually precede the comment (it is most effective communicatively to begin with shared or old information before giving new information, likely because it exploits short-term memory). And within the comment, where the new information is placed, a large number of languages in the world prefer to place the patient or object before the predicating element. So if someone somewhere is eating a fruit, this can be described as either fruit-eat or eat-fruit, with most languages choosing the former (e.g., German, Pirahã, Japanese, and thousands of others). E. Gibson et al. (2013, 1079) have argued that word orders may be heavily influenced by strategies to deal with “noise corrupting the linguistic signal.” They predict in particular that subject-verb-object (SVO) will be more common than subject-object-verb (SOV) order in the absence of case-marking. Now, on the one hand this does not prohibit SOV languages without case marking (and in fact, there are many of these crosslinguistically). On the other hand, it is not clear whether there is anything remotely like case marking or argument marking in homesigning. And yet, the basic problem that communicators have to solve is communicating new information about shared information. So the object/patient is expected, ceterus paribus, to be adjacent to the verb, at least when both communicate new information—which is generally so—and the subject/agent farther away. And there are only two choices: object-verb or verb-object. Thus nothing very serious should be read into finding one of these orders among homesigners.

  Nor should it be surprising that once an order is chosen, it is easier to stay with it than to order objects and verbs randomly. Nor is there anything in the genetic endowment that should be applied about information structure. Topic-comment is a natural communicative arrangement. But Goldin-Meadow neglects to discuss the information-theoretic possible constraints on ordering, and hence misses a potential alternative explanation for her facts.

  Homesigning clearly illustrates the desire of all members of our species to communicate (Aristotle’s “social instinct”). And it shows a range of common solutions to the problem of how to communicate. But not only do we have no convincing syntactic analysis of the facts, but evidence suggests (Andrén 2010; Duncan 2002, 2006; Zlatev, forthcoming) that in fact gestures are sufficiently motivated by communicational needs that it makes little sense to attribute them to the genes as language-specific biological endowment.

  Summary

  This chapter has given an overview and detailed discussion of gestures and their relationship to dark matter, grammar, communication, and the origin of language. Though we looked primarily at the pioneering and cutting-edge work of David McNeill, we also surveyed other approaches to gestures. We learned that, many claims to the contrary notwithstanding, gestures provide no strong evidence of innate dark matter but, on the contrary, show how culture and individual psychology can produce gestures as part of language, just as they do with syntax and other components of human language.

  8

  Dark Matter Confrontations in Translation

  Even more important than what takes place inside the translator’s brain is what takes
place in the total cultural framework in which the communication occurs.

  EUGENE NIDA, Toward a Science of Translating

  In the previous chapter, we examined ideas about the origin of language and the multimodal, hoslitic nature of linguistic communication. In this chapter we want to look at how distinct languages-culture pairs can be mapped on to one another—that is, how translation works and what makes it possible. Evidence is presented that translation is never completely successful, due to the way that language is shaped and controlled by dark matter. The chapter also offers a discussion of methodology for what Quine referred to as “radical translation.”

  In the introduction to this book I mentioned problems that I encountered in translation when I went to the Pirahãs to translate the Bible. Those problems included things like the fact that the Pirahãs have no concept of God—certainly no “Supreme Being”—that Pirahãs do not like for any individual to tell another individual how to live; that Pirahãs do not feel spiritually lost, and so on. The introduction also discussed some of the mistaken assumptions—dark matter—of American missionaries and perhaps others who translate for more traditional societies. These included things like the fact that although most American missionaries believe that God has “prepared” every culture to understand the “gospel” (the “good news”; i.e., to understand that God’s son, Jesus, died on a cross for their sins), the Pirahãs find the concepts of savior, sin, and salvation incomprehensible; that in spite of American missionaries’ belief that people like the Pirahãs are afraid of a dark, threatening evil spiritual world and that many of them will be overjoyed at the missionary’s arrival with the news that Jesus has freed them from this fear, the Pirahãs fear nothing and were uninterested in the missionary message; that American missionaries believe all languages will be able to convey all the concepts necessary to express the full New Testament message. It is the job of the translator to find the appropriate words and phrases in the target language and then to match them with the appropriate Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew concepts. This view of translation is false, as we will see in what follows.

  But, as stated from the outset, more important than even the differences between the translator and his or her audience is the fact that their profound differences are unspoken. Both are guided through any encounters by the invisible hands of conflicting cultural values.

  Negotiating a Cultural Semantics

  Throughout our lives we work with one social group or another to negotiate the meanings of words, actions, expressions, omissions, and the other facets of the meanings arising from our lives-in-the-world. Meaning is never the possession or creation of a hearer and a speaker alone, but also is created from the social situation, which itself emerges from a particular union of cultures in time and space (Foley 1997, 2007; Pike 1967; Geertz 1973, among others). It is the negotiation to find fit between dark matters—and it often fails exactly because the matters are dark.

  Translation (by which term I also subsume what some call “interpretation”) is the occupation of vast numbers of our species. Shamans, preachers, imams, swamis, and priests regularly interpret the will or words of god/the gods to the laity. US Supreme Court justices translate the US Constitution. Teachers translate other minds’ overt and dark matter for students. Contractors translate blueprints into concrete, steel, and wood. Scientists translate observations into theories. We all map meanings onto other meanings and forms onto other forms, working each minute of the day to express the etic in the emic.

  Translation is our principal tool for understanding and being understood. And we all translate in one of two senses. First, we translate others’ actions, words, postures, dress, intonation, gestures, facial expressions, driving, table etiquette, and so on—all that is visible about them and interpretable by our dark matter, for ourselves. Let us call this self-directed translation. We have evolved to be good enough at this to remove ourselves from danger, to dominate others, to navigate through the social worlds that envelop us. We do this in part by seeing etics and imposing emics. We assume that we are experiencing the other’s emic perspective because it is the only way that we, without special training or experience, know how to interpret the world around us. For example, when someone raises his eyebrows after you make a remark, is he being funny or sarcastic or seriously doubting what you said?1 If someone puts her shoes on, is she going out or is she just cold? (My dog is good at telling the difference, by looking at what shoes I have put on and whether I tied them or not.) And how do we interpret language in our environment, whether directed at us or not?

  But there is another, also common, form of translation: other-directed translation. In this mode of translation, our goal is enable one party to understand another by learning the emic perspectives of each of them—that is, coming to know the dark matter of two differently emicized others, retelling the emic of one as the emic of another.

  Failure to translate well or at all—misunderstanding others—is perhaps more common than accurate translation—understanding others; and this failure is caused by a variety of factors. Perhaps the most common is to interpret the etic actions of one person as the emic actions of another (your own, for example), and therefore not attempting to understand the interlocutor’s dark matter.2 Another is assuming that the other’s etic actions are in fact their emic intentions. For example, if someone raises his voice, you may assume he’s angry because to you that etic action indexes anger emically; or an Indian in Delhi “waggles” her head subtly and you misinterpret acquiescence as disapproval.

  Another reason for translation failure is incomplete emicization—thinking that you have an insider’s perspective but not, in fact, being quite there. You have lived in a culture for several months and think you can now semi-reliably interpret, say, body postures and hand gestures, yet you still are capable of embarrassing gaffes. Quine argued (1960) that because words are associated with their objects only by means of stimuli and responses, and because we can never say for certain what stimulus another is responding to, we can never fully translate the other; there always exists an indeterminacy—even if we share a significant number of cultural values, for example. Our apperceptions, constructed selves, and dark matter will be differently formed.

  Bakhtin (1984) recognizes other complications in translation; namely, that we and our interlocutors speak simultaneously with different voices (heteroglossia) and that we are always hearing multiple voices (polyphony). For example, I may incorporate into my speech the speech of others, heteroglossia—knowingly or unknowingly. And I will always be sensitive to the linguistic environment around me, speaking words under social constraints. So as we translate one voice into another, we cannot be sure that there is only one voice or two that we are hearing, or that we are speaking with ourselves (from, say, our different roles in society, different knowledge structures for different roles). In fact, Bakhtin would no doubt argue that translation is always many-to-many and never one-to-one.

  When we take upon ourselves other-directed translation, our success is also based on our conception of how we go about establishing emic to emic links. What translation model should we use? Should translation be literal, dynamic, free, or something else? We discuss each of these as we proceed, since each of these types of translation impose different demands on dark matter.

  A literal translation is, roughly, a word-for-word translation. Most literary translators, United Nations translators, and other secular translators would recognize immediately that a literal translation in this sense is neither possible nor even desirable. It is not possible because the lexicons and grammars of different languages are never in one-to-one correspondence. Literal translation is also undesirable because it fails to link substance and style, form and content, appropriately in the target language (see the discussion below of Susan Sontag’s thoughts on these matters).

  TRANSLATION CONTROVERSIES

  Take, for example, the translation of the word virgin that is found in the Bible in relation to the birth of
the Messiah:

  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

  In this translation, the New International Version, Isaiah is said to prophesy that “Immanuel” (literally, “God with us”)—that is, the Messiah—is to be born from a woman that had no sexual relations. This translation is crucial to the New Testament story because in the Christian interpretations of Matthew 1:22–23, the “virgin birth” is said to have been uniquely fulfilled by Mary’s “immaculate conception” (New International Version). All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.”

  But in fact this is not what Isaiah said. The prophet Isaiah used the Hebrew word almah , which means “young woman.” This can mean either a young woman who is a virgin or simply a young, though sexually initiated, woman.

  This ambiguity is interesting because upon the subtle translation choice that might resolve the ambiguity rests an entire theology of Jesus and his mother, Mary. According to some theologians, the Hebrew word almah is ambiguous between “young girl” and “virgin.” Many Jewish scholars disagree with the Christian (and Muslim) interpretation that Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. But for some Christian scholars, the issue was settled in the Septuagint, LXX (Ἡ μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα), or the “70,” a translation of the Old Testament into Greek in the second century BCE. Since the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was done by Jewish scholars, it is assumed that they would know what the original cultural interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 would be. Conservative theologians say that the inherent ambiguity is resolved because the Greek New Testament used the word parthenos (παρθένος), which is claimed to unambiguously mean “virgin,” a young maiden who has not had sexual relations.