Incomprehensible Language

The US culture has long been fond of words. We have "word for the day" calendars. And on-line dictionaries offer up words for the day. At Dictionary.com the word for today is cavil. The word for the day at Merriam-Webster is riposte. The word for the day at the New York Times is seclusion.

In addition to this fascination with words for the day, many of us also want to increasing our "word power." One web site titled "How To Increase Your Word Power" offers us the Indo-European roots for words. Clicking on the"roots" link and then on annu- , enni- yields (after some editing by me):

annu- enni-
annal
Mr. Johnson compiles the annals of the Historical Society.
The professor has read all the annals of early American history.
annual
Here is a picture of Tom in his high-school annual.
Beans and corn are annuals; you have to plant a new crop every year.
perennial
I’m tired of your perennial nagging!
These flowers are perennials; you don’t have to plant new seeds every year.
centennial
This is the centennial anniversary of the founding of our town.
The centennial of the end of the Civil War occurred in 1965.
annuity
How much is the annuity from this life insurance?

I suppose that learning the roots of words can help with understanding them. As the national spelling bee broadcast by ESPN each year illustrates, the kids are always asking for roots of words, which seems to help them with spelling. However, I think that it would be much easier to learn English words by learning English words rather than by learning Greek or Latin words first.

Many years ago, there was a competition within the Humanities college for "seed" grants of, I think, $1,000 or so to help people put together credible grant proposals, primarily for the National Endowment for the Humanities (I think). I got a call from the Dean who asked me whether a proposal by some Classics professor for a seed grant to develop materials to assist the teaching of Latin to inner city children as a means to increase their ability to read and write Standard English made any sense. I told the Dean that that the proposal was silly, which is what he thought as well. If you want inner city or other kids (e.g., kids speaking Appalachian English) how to read and write Standard English then teach them how to read and write Standard English directly.

The silly grant proposal is a species of the approach to increasing word power of learning Indo-European roots. It just doesn't go back as far in time for the roots.

This is a long-winded opening to what I really want to talk about and that is simply knowing the meanings of English words may not help you much in understanding what you want to read (or listen to). I recently was on an oral doctoral thesis defense in astrophysics at Ohio State (as the dissertation cop -- i.e., the outside observer). I am pleased to say that I understood almost every word in the dissertation. Here is one of the easiest examples:

In practice, almost all reverberation mapping data has been insufficient to constrain the transfer function, and reverberation analysis has instead relied on cross-correlation techniques.

I understand every single word in that sentence but I don't have a clue what the sentence means. I think I understand The reverberation of the sounds in the auditorium led to a distracting echo. So, I have "reverberation" down (I think). I also know what "transfer" and "function" mean but I can't tell you what the formula for this function is. Ergo, I don't understand what the sentence cited means. This is the crux of the matter.

Learning new words is both a linguistic and a cognitive exercise. It is linguistic in the sense that we are learning to pair sounds with meanings but it is cognitive in that we must understand the underlying theory wherein the words derive their meanings. For words like cavil or riposte or seclusion, we already know the theory presupposed by these things. We might call this "The Theory of Ordinary Things." The problem in coping with sentences such as the astrophysics example cited, is that one must actually learn the subset of astrophysical theory within which this language derives its meaning. And this means, among other things, that one must understand the mathematics employed that expresses the various relationships that exist among the various phenomena this theory is about and that would include understanding the "transfer function."

Years ago, I had a student that was struggling with a syntactic theory course I was teaching. He came in for help and I asked him to show me a passage in the text that he didn't understand. He pointed to a paragraph on a page on which there was some prose and several formulae (yes, Virgina, there is mathematics in linguistics). I pointed to the formula above that paragraph and asked if he understood that. He said he didn't and that he always depended on the prose surrounding any formula he didn't understand to provide him with whatever understanding of the text he would need. I pointed out that if we could teach what students needed to understand without using formulae we would but we can't. He asked me to interpret the formula for him and I did. His performance in the class improved.