Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 March 8

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March 8

Amanda Strang

What is her biology, i.e.: is she half chinese, half french?70.73.145.207 (talk) 00:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Eurasian (mixed ancestry)? --Nricardo (talk) 05:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Opps wrong desk.96.53.149.117 (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed

Imagine that the two-way communication of signals between us and some space-aliens orbiting a distant star has been established. They are blind and immobile and cannot use pictures or diagrams of any kind. There is no pre-established code or alphabet. While I can imagine that eventually the meaning of mathematical or logical symbols might eventually be established (for example tranmitting many messages such as "..+..=...." would give meaning to + and =), would it be possible to eventually build up enough meaning from a zero base so that in time they would understand what was meant by the message "Last thursday my Uncle Bill went to the supermarket"? Helen Keller springs to mind. 89.240.206.60 (talk) 02:01, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how it's possible to go from 2+2=4 to any non-math concept. Remember, it was impossible to decipher hieroglyphics without help from the Rosetta Stone, even though they were written by human beings, and this would be n times worse (n >> 1). Clarityfiend (talk) 05:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Earth has blind, immobile animals called barnacles, and some humans have done research on how to talk with animals (http://www.howtotalkwithanimals.com/), but I have never heard of anyone attempting to communicate with a terrestrial barnacle. Instead of contemplating communication with alien barnacle-like creatures, why not ponder how we humans can communicate better with each other? -- Wavelength (talk) 06:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

LINCOS was a whole elaborate language (developed at length in a book) based more or less around that premise (though I think there were some abstract mathematical images included)... AnonMoos (talk) 07:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

H. Beam Piper's much-reprinted story Omnilinual has terrans cracking the Martian language by finding a periodic table. Unfortunately, the idea in the story simply doesn't work: the English names for common elements only make sense in the context of the history of science, not modern science (eg oxygen = 'acid-maker' and hydrogen = 'water-maker]; these are Graeco-Latin rather than English, but German for example translates the roots and still perpetuates the errors), so why assume that the Martian names would be meaningful? --ColinFine (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I coincidentally ran into the following article today ---> Pioneer plaque ... in which NASA scientists are, in fact, trying to communicate with distant space aliens ... albeit with the use of pictures. (Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC))

The essential bottleneck to get through may be that of naming geometric shapes, such as a triangle. A triangle could then be used to build up other shapes. The triangle could be named after being identified by its mathematical properties. If however they have no sense of the spatial, then you are stuffed. 89.243.72.122 (talk) 23:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

How can an organism distinguish between a random collection of perceptible stimuli and a purposeful collection of perceptible stimuli produced by intelligent design? How can it distinguish between a message and a non‑message?

-- Wavelength (talk) 02:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Humans or even sheepdogs or bees seem to have no problems with doing that. And if we humans recieved a signal from a distant star in the form of the Fibonacci series or any other simple mathematical series, then that would indicate that the sender was an intelligent being. 89.242.94.128 (talk) 11:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The series should not be too simple, as then we could not be sure it was not generated by some nonsentient physical process. The Fibonacci sequence in particular is a very bad example, as it is known to appear in nature without any involvement of intelligence, see Fibonacci number#Fibonacci numbers in nature. — Emil J. 13:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This fellow's research into a generalization of information theory that assumes no prior common language might be of interest, for a formal take on a specific variation of the question, which he calls "Universal Semantic Communication". The general strategy is to frame it as goal-oriented communication, which allows us to conclude that we've successfully communicated something when we can achieve some goal as a result of the communication faster than we would've been able to do without it. --Delirium (talk) 02:55, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth posting this question on the mathematics desk. I am sure that they would have ways of encoding mathematics that they would think recognisable (and going from simple operations to advanced formula). They might even have some insights in how to jump out of Mathematics. -- Q Chris (talk) 13:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have copied the discussion to this point and pasted it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Mathematics#Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed.

-- Wavelength (talk) 15:07, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have also copied the same text and pasted it at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Communicating meaning with distant space aliens - no pictures allowed.

-- Wavelength (talk) 19:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I wish you had not done that. It may create confusion, and seems to be bad etiquette. Even just a link back to here without copying the text may be too much. 78.146.99.239 (talk) 20:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The question posed by the OP is impossible. If the aliens in question were blind and immobile (immobile being the crux here), it would be extremely unlikely that they would have developed the technology to communicate with us, considering the fact that they can't even move around to make anything.--KageTora (talk) 11:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I admit I was mistaken to say they were immobile. So I now drop that requirement. I can imagine transmitting into space a long message which starts with the elementary maths and logic, and somehow builds up enough meaning to include at the end Wikipedia and many factual books and literature. I've never used the computer language Forth, but maybe it might work by building new definitions upon existing definitions, in the same way that the Forth interpreter does, although in this case there would be no pre-existing definitions.

A functionally similar situation is where you have two illiterate prisoners in two nearby dungeons. They can only communicate with each other by tapping on a water pipe, they cannot otherwise hear each other. As they are both illiterate, they do not have any existing written language or alphabet they could use as a code. So for example using one tap for "A", two taps for "B"....would not work. They also speak a different language.

If they were clever enough and had enough time and patience, and understood things like maths logic and geometry, could they in theory eventually create a tapping language from a zero base that was capable of expressing as much meaning as for example english? Or would this be impossible? 78.146.23.195 (talk) 00:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

This new situation is very different. The two prisoners are only separated by language - and perhaps culture - and they can communicate back and forth freely in realtime. They both know what a flower is - each is familiar with the concept of family and roughly what a house consists of. Our aliens don't know any of those things - and it's probably going to take 100 years to get a message out to them and back again. However, you don't have the luxury of assuming that an entire civilisation of scientists will spend decades pouring over every nuance of your message in an effort to decode it - probably using high speed computers to help. If your prisoners have infinite time and infinite patience (and lots of paper to write on) - then they MIGHT manage it - but the approaches have to be very different in the two cases.

With the prisoners - we could send pictures...VERY S-L-O-W-L-Y...but we could. If we establish the concept of a 'number' using a binary code - hard-tap for '1', gentle-tap for '0' - send 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,...as binary numbers...and wait for the other guy to send you 7, 8, 9... (or at least something that makes it clear that he understood. Then you could send the other guy a smiley-face made of 1's and 0's using prime-numbers for the X and Y dimensions of the picture. He gets this random-looking streams of taps - turns them into numbers and starts to wonder what they mean. He will hopefully at some point realize that the number of 1's and 0's he's been sent is a number that can be formed by multiplying two prime numbers in only one way. (eg, if he got 221 ones and zeroes - and we stipulate that he's a really smart guy - he might think to write them out in a 13x17 grid - and the moment he does that, he sees a "smiley-face" of 1's in amongst a lot of zeroes). Now he can send a picture of a flower in the same 'format' along with his word for 'flower' in morse code - and before you know it - they can talk. Even if they are both blind - they can punch the 1's and 0's into the paper as holes and not-holes and feel them. Since both know the feeling of the shapes of common objects, they can still communicate. So long as they have any common experiences that can be expressed in binary - they can (in principle) talk. SteveBaker (talk) 12:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

what does anbu mean in japanese

what does anbu mean in japanese

It may be either of:

1. 暗部 anbu - dark part
2. 鞍部 anbu - saddle of a mountain

--Sushiya (talk) 07:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Or the name "Amber", or short for umbrella. Also;

あんぶ [暗部] (n) dark side (of nature, town, etc.)

あんぶ [鞍部] (n) col, saddle between mountains

あんぶん [案分, 按分, あん分] (n, vs) proportional division or distribution

あんぶん, あんもん [案文] (n) draft, draught

アンブッシュ (n) ambush

アンブレラカット (n) umbrella cut

--  Chzz  ►  07:50, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting in English?

Are any examples of syntax highlighting for plain English available online? NeonMerlin 06:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting is actually semantic highlighting. However, with natural languages, it's exceedingly hard to guess at the semantics from just the syntax, so my guess would be "No." --Kjoonlee 15:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

There have actually been databases of text sequences annotated with "Part-of-speech tagging" for a long time, if that's adequate... AnonMoos (talk) 16:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

spanish translation

how do you say fishing lure in spanish? i know bait is carnada, and fishing hook is gancho* *=i think.Troyster87 (talk) 09:51, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Hook is anzuelo. Fishing lure appears to be cucharilla, see here and here. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 14:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes; here in my country we call it cucharita, term which is our normal diminutive form of cuchara (spoon). Pallida  Mors 14:47, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

es:Aparejo (pesca) only seems to have floaters. Maybe one of the links form es:Pesca deportiva has something. Alternatively you could start a page with the translations the others gave you and see if it takes. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 16:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

From the DRAE: cucharilla. 4. f. Artificio para pescar con caña que tiene varios anzuelos y está provisto de una pieza metálica que con su brillo y movimiento atrae a los peces. (Rod-fishing device that has several hooks and is equipped with a metallic part, which with its brightness and motion attracts the fish). And regarding bait, I hadn't heard carnada, only cebo. You can see a discussion of the (slight) differences in usage between the words here.--NorwegianBlue ^talk 17:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

pawing: Can a horse "paw" the ground?

Would it be correct to say "The horses were pawing the ground?" I think I've heard this phrase, but of course, horses don't have paws.... How else could you say that?

Yes, it certainly can be said that way. In fact, that is the most common expression. You couldn't say "The horses were hoofing the ground." They paw for reasons of frustration or impatience, or as a precursor to fighting, or to scrape snow from the grass underneath.... There is no mention of pawing at Horse behavior. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:25, 8 March 2009 (UTC) PS See a basic google search here. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:28, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

It might be rare, but I think you can say "hoof the ground" [1][2]. Most dictionaries also list a verb "to trample with hooves", and in context it could be understood as equal to "paw". 219.102.220.90 (talk) 00:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The word piaffe might apply here, and it might not. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Equine#Participants. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:20, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

See 2 in the middle here [3]. Deer do it, sheep do it and horses in art do it. So it's safe to say real ones do it, too. 76.97.245.5 (talk) 00:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See the definition of the verb in on-line dictionaries. Oda Mari (talk) 05:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You could say a horse "hoofed the ground", but it would usually mean something more like "trod" or "trampled" – there is an implication that the horse is moving along. What I think we are talking about here is when a horse (or other quadruped) stands still, scraping at the ground with a forefoot. That is indeed called "pawing", despite horses not having any paws. (They have forearms too, despite having no arms, and their "knees" are actually wrists...) As BrainyBabe says, horses often paw when frustrated, bored or impatient, and also to scrape snow, to smash ice, or sometimes when drinking in shallow water. Richard New Forest (talk) 16:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Pawing the ground is when one front foot is on the ground and the horse energetically scrapes the other foot over the ground or stamps with it. Typically, a horse will do this a few times with one hoof and then swaps over to the other hoof for a while. The back hooves don't do anything special. Pawing shows impatience or irritation. A horse may do this when waiting to be fed or if it is keen to go. Piaffe is something else entirely different to pawing the ground. It is when the horse trots on the spot. This is a two time movement in which the horse jumps from one diagonal pair of legs to the other. It can be done when the horse is in the field, as an expression of great excitment or to show off. Piaffe is often followed by passage - a lofty, slow gait which is also in two time - from one diagonal pair to the other - but where the horse also moves forward and additionally seems to hang in the air. Trot is also two time with the same diagonal pair sequence but it does not have the 'hanging in the air' look to it. A trot moves forward also. Getting a horse to piaffe and passage on demand while under saddle shows a great deal of training and rider ability, and to do them both well is difficult to achieve. In top level dressage, the piaffe-passage-piaffe part of a test is always scrutinized by the fans. A 'passagey' trot is marked down in competition because it detracts from the purity of the trot gait. 64.208.49.28 (talk) 17:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If I may be permitted to beat a dead horse here, (pardon the pun), yes, horses "paw" the ground as described above. So do cattle. I would point out that people also do not have paws, yet engage in (completely unrelated) behavior that we call "pawing." I don't know the etymological origins of words referring to assorted random uses of the forelimbs as "pawing" in creatures that don't have paws, but clearly it is there. Montanabw^(talk) 03:09, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I wondered when we'd get a horse expert with an account. Leave no dead horse unflogged in our attempt to satisfy the OP! BrainyBabe (talk) 03:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Pawing suggests a blunt or rough action. Anyway, fwiw, "From Middle English, from Old French poue, probably of Germanic origin and related to Dutch poot.