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ABSTRACT
A model is proposed for the functioning of natural language in a mind. The
model results from investigating and combining information-processing of two
types: that of inexact patterns (e.g., visual images). and that of symbolic
code (i.e., natural language). First an underlying model is presented for
the input/output data-flows of the sensorium/motorium of the human mind,
including its memory. The underlying model is that of a highly orthogonal
grid, with input and output flowing vertically, in parallel but opposite
directions, while associative interconnections flow back and forth
horizontally. In the superstructure model for natural language, an
"abstract" memory channel is superimposed to flow in parallel with the
input/output channels, in such a way that a spiral of habituation comes to
dominate the associative crossflows in a conscious, linguistically
generative process of "transabstractivity."
1. INTRODUCTION
This article proposes a two-tiered model for the functioning of natural
language in a mind. The two tiers derive from the need to have both a
concrete level of sensation and an abstract level of mental processing. The
concrete and abstract levels correspond to a duality in the types of
information to be processed in a mind: inexact patterns, such as visual
images, and symbolic code, i.e., natural language. The lower-tier model of
pattern-recognition is necessary as an underlying assumption before the
upper-tier model of habituated linguistic control can be developed. Since
the main endeavor in this article is to present the psycholinguistic model,
the author begs the reader's indulgence if the model of pattern-recognition
seems far-fetched or is erroneous.
2. OVERVIEW OF THE ASSOCIATIVE GRID OF THE SENSORIUM/MOTORIUM
The underlying model organizes the input/output data-flows of the
sensorium/motorium of the human mind, including and emphasizing its memory.
The rationale is to organize the data-flows as a prelude to controlling them
with a "transabstractive" grammar system. The model organizes the data
flows into a relatively flat, highly orthogonal grid or array. The inputs
and outputs of the sensorium/motorium flow vertically up and down the grid,
in respectively parallel but opposite directions. For the remainder of this
article, the inputs of the sensorium are to be visualized as flowing
vertically downward on the left side of the non-abstract, "concrete" grid,
while the outputs of the motorium flow vertically upwards on the right side
of the grid. The interface with the outside world is therefore at the top
of the grid, consisting of sensors on the left and motor musculature on the
right. After pre-processing, the input/output data-paths descend down their
respective halves of the grid through experiential memory channels on the
left and motor memory channels on the right. There is a strict parallelism
of the various memory channels lying vertically in the grid. This article
is concerned mainly with interactions among the memory channels, and
accordingly the grid is to be visualized as consisting mainly of elongated,
vertically parallel memory channels.
Interconnecting associative "tags" flow horizontally back and forth
among the memory channels in the concrete grid. The grid is highly
orthogonal because information can change its path only at right angles.
The horizontal associativity is vertically analogous to a
time-dimension. The gridwork of memory is gradually filled from the top
downward towards the bottom over the psychic lifetime of the organism. The
lavishly available memory space is genetically "hardwired," so that the
activity of mentation has only to travel gradually downward through the
tabula rasa of the memory grid. Any line, drawn horizontally across the
grid so as orthogonally to intersect the various memory channels, represents
a unique moment in the experiential history of the organism.
From this point on, the article follows a method of circumscription by
first merely outlining a general system and then addressing those particular
elements within that system which are relevant to the development of the
"transabstractive" superstructure of natural language. The first
circumscription is to drop consideration of the right-hand motor side of the
underlying, concrete associative grid. Suffice it to say that motor memory
does figure in the genesis or development of a holistic model of the mind,
especially as regards volition, but that this article concentrates on the
passive, experiential, "left" side of the model as the arena over which
natural language operates.
In the holistic visualization, the passive left side of the mind-model
contains a separate but parallel memory channel for each of the distinct
senses which a mind might possess, such as the five commonly acknowledged
human senses. An important facet of this general model is the idea that any
conceivable sense could be added on in parallel to widen the associative
grid, as long as the principle of orthogonality were not violated. An
experiential memory channel here is a bidirectional data-path originally and
permanently filled in the downward direction from top towards bottom. The
temporally successive, horizontal associativity of the quasi-concrete grid
absorbs as many sensory memory channels as evolution (or artifice) can
provide. A full complement of unimpaired sensory channels provides an
organism with full breadth of multi-sensory experience. However, a person
can have severe sensory impairments and still function as a highly
intelligent mind. This discussion serves to introduce the second
circumscription of this article, namely that from this point on the article
will develop the superstructure for natural language solely in terms of the
senses of vision and audition. The aforementioned duality of pattern and
symbolic code is to be discussed using vision to treat pattern and audition
to treat code.
3. THE MODEL OF THE AUDITORY CHANNEL
Now begin descriptions firstly of the auditory channel, next of the visual
channel, and then of the "abstract" memory channel which connects and
controls the other two in "transabstractivity."
This general model attempts to follow the human mind, however murkily
known, but it is directed towards a hardware construction of an automaton.
Therefore the discrete memory mechanisms or components are visualized as
physical hardware rather than as biological tissue. The basic model is that
of perhaps an electronic multivibrator or even of an electromechanical
latching relay. The basic requirement of a tabula-rasa memory "cell" here
is that it shall retain permanently its status of either "on" or "off"
("full" or "empty') when a brain-wave type control-pulse orders the
unerasable "hardening" or fixation of whatever data happen momentarily to be
flowing through the cell and its associated cells. The cell shall also be
associatively "taggable," typically as part of an aggregate, so that a
unitary associative tag, leading orthogonally away from the channel
containing the aggregate, can either control and activate the aggregate or
be controlled and activated by the aggregate. Thus data are laid down
permanently within a channel, but their informational content is free to
move either bidirectionally within the channel or orthogonally away from the
channel.
The auditory memory channel is designed here as the target destination
of multitudinous transmission lines carrying the component data of sounds.
Although the holistic visualization of this general approach contains a
tentative scheme for clusters of short-term memory loops at the entrance to
the auditory memory channel, this article requires only the long-term,
permanent memory channel for the discussion of "transabstractive" natural
language.
Within our circumscription we are examining the left side, or passive
experiential half, of the flat associative grid. The auditory memory
channel is to be visualized as itself a flat cable lying both flat in the
plane of the grid and on the right side of this experiential half. We are
developing a "transabstractive" area bordered on the left by the visual
memory channel and on the right by the auditory memory channel.
Our intent with the auditory memory channel is to deposit engrams of
sounds and phonemes. The channel consists of thousands of transmission
lines flowing vertically downward in strict registry and in parallel with
the other memory channels. Each engram-aggregate is a horizontal slice of
memory "cells" as nodes upon the transmission lines of the channel. Each
slice has (at least) two genetically-provided, tabula-rasa type associative
tags exiting the channel. One class of associative tags exits horizontally
and orthogonally out towards the visual channel on the left. The other
class, which we might as well call the "habituation-class," exits
perpendicularly and rises orthogonally out of the associative plane en route
to interaction with a grammar habituation system, of which the description
comes further on as the main purpose of this article.
This auditory memory channel is designed to remember words or parts of
words as strings of phonemes. A phoneme is modelled as a distribution of
activated nodes within an engram-slice. It may actually require several or
many slices in a row to comprise one time-extended phoneme, but for the
purpose of clear simplicity we will treat the single phoneme as if it were a
unitary engram-slice subject to unitary associative tagging.
All sounds and words consciously heard are deposited automatically as
engrams within the auditory memory channel, but only those words are
"learned" to which access is gained and maintained via the associative tags.
In our model, we are discussing the learning of language-words with
reference to visual images resting in the visual memory channel, which lies
in parallel with and to the far left of the auditory channel. The visual
channel, too, has slices and horizontal associative tags, attached to the
image-slices. (The feature-extracted image-slices would perhaps be rather
unrecognizable if memory-dumped from the system.) A word or morpheme is
learned, in reference to vision and all other senses, through a process of
associativity based upon simultaneity in the permanent fixation or
"hardening" of the horizontal associative tags which interconnect the
various sensory memory channels.
Let us summarize the function of the auditory memory channel with
respect to words and morphemes. As a string of phonemes, a word or morpheme
is learned passively when horizontal associative fixation enables another
sensory channel to evoke the activation of the phonemic string at its
permanently fixed location within the auditory memory channel. An incoming
(erstwhile potentially bidirectional) tag which starts the activation of a
phonemic string is to be described both as a "recall-tag" while en route and
as an "onset-tag" at its point within the auditory memory channel where the
tag activates the first phoneme in the phonemic string of a word or
morpheme.
Here mention must be made of a tentatively proposed "string-effect"
within the auditory memory channel. Morphemes accessed by an onset-tag will
go into full serial engram-slice string-activation either until the last
phoneme in the string shunts the activation-flow orthogonally out along an
exiting associative tag, or until the strong activation of the
"string-effect" fades abruptly at the end of the string. (For remembered
music, the string-effect might go on quite long.) The string-effect is
therefore a tendency of related and contiguous memory slices to fire in a
serial string.
When a morpheme in auditory memory has been accessed by an onset-tag
laid down at some time in the past, the phonemic string of the morpheme
instantaneously flows serially down through the transmission lines within
the auditory memory channel and is deposited anew at the freshest extremity
of the gradually downward-travelling "front" of auditory memory of auditory
experience. This creeping "front" of auditory experience is in horizontal
registry with the other parallel channels that are all moving or filling
downward into the tabula-rasa area of the associative memory grid.
While an accessed morpheme is flowing through the auditory memory
channel, each individually activated transmission line is momentarily
energizing or stimulating each of its myriad cell-nodes which have in the
past been positively fixated in the status of "on" or "full" as mentioned
above. Thus the initial activation of one phoneme, morpheme, or word in the
channel can "tickle" or predispose the activation of myriad other such
auditory engram-aggregates. We posit now a differentiation-process wherein
the relatively largest and strongest summation of individually firing nodes
within the engram-slices of a single, aggregate memory trace can cause that
memory trace to win out in a sort of competitive race to be the first among
other memory traces responding to the activation of the originally accessed
memory trace. (Non-activated nodes may act inhibitively to enhance the
differentiation.) The competition for primacy of response is quickly
happening amid these various parameters, not the least of which is the
time-factor, because the extremely free and mobile associativity of
mentation will quickly go the path of least resistance without waiting for
any delayed response.
By now the model has described how an extraneous recall-tag from a
sense such as vision can activate an auditory engram with two results: the
old auditory memory is laid down anew at the freshest extremity of the
auditory memory channel, and a highly similar trace in the auditory channel
can be activated in response to the activation of the first trace. When a
trace does respond, it outputs a signal along an associative tag which is to
be called here an "ultimate-tag," because the tag is attached to the
ultimate phoneme in the phonemic string. Of course, that "ultimate-tag"
from audition can be a "recall-tag" going over into vision. Thus a visual
image can associatively access a morphemic word, which can stimulate the
response of an identical or similar word at a different location in the
auditory channel, with the result that a totally different visual image can
then be accessed back again in the visual memory channel. Associativity can
loop in and out of memory channels in an untrammeled fashion.
In describing how an associatively accessed, auditory engram-slice
would stimulate or elicit the "recall" of an identical or most strongly
similar engram-slice, the model has at the same time shown how incoming
auditory data from the outside world would be processed. External auditory
data, to be laid down in permanent memory, traverse the length of the
auditory memory channel and are deposited by fixation at the freshest
extremity of the channel. External auditory data are "recognized" if their
passage through the channel stimulates and elicits responding
trace-activation as described above. However, such responding engram-slices
do not travel to the fixation-extremity and therefore can not be redeposited
there; they are already permanently fixated in their original locations. It
is important to understand that only two sorts of auditory data traverse the
auditory memory channel into fixation at its freshest extremity: fresh
external auditory data on the one hand, and old, internal,
associative-tag-activated data on the other hand. In other words, newly
fixated data or newly re-fixated data must come from the active sources of
external perception or internal associativity, respectively. (The
mind-model remembers both its external and its internal experiences.) At
least two rationales militate against the notion that memory-extremity
re-fixation might occur of response-slices "flushed out" by incoming
perception-data. Firstly, there is no need for redeposit of such old data
if they are highly similar to the incoming new data. Secondly, the
presently incoming perception-data are already flooding the transmission
lines, making it simultaneously impossible for the products of "recall" to
move about within the auditory memory channel. Of course, and in accordance
with this whole scheme of recognition during perception, massive data-flow
can be occurring orthogonally out of and away from the auditory memory
channel while incoming auditory data are traversing the channel into
fixation at its creeping extremity.
When fresh, incoming data are deposited by fixation at the extremity of
the auditory memory channel, they also by virtue of simultaneity enter into
permanent association with various other memory channels lying in parallel.
The associative tags which effect this permanent association and integration
of fresh data are the same tags by which access to the data will be
maintained in the future.
This fixation of association through simultaneity happens not just to
fresh data-slices, but also to old data-slices which have been sent coursing
down through the memory channel after activation of their associative
onset-tags. Thus an old memory-slice can enter into new associations
whenever it is redeposited. It should be becoming apparent now that thus an
enormous body of belief or knowledge could gradually accrete onto some key
reference-memories. The very frequency with which a memory were
associatively reactivated, and therefore redeposited, could influence the
future likelihood of subsequent reactivation. In this model, a memory can
grow stronger by increasing the number of the instances of its reactivation.
The foregoing model of the auditory memory channel has contained
certain crucial highlights which will come into play when the three channels
of visual memory, "abstract" memory, and auditory memory are combined in the
development of the linguistic control system for natural language.
4. THE MODEL OF THE VISUAL CHANNEL
The whole genesis of this model has hinged upon distinctions in the duality
of pattern and symbolic code. It is argued here that code, because of its
exact and facile manipulability, is essential for "transabstractivity,"
while less exact but information-rich pattern is essential for the
underlying knowledge that culminates in abstractions. In this article,
pattern is to be treated with respect to vision, because the sense of vision
is our greatest floodgate of perception. However, vision is not considered
essential in this model of artificial intelligence; the autobiography of
Helen Keller [1] has strengthened the author's conviction in this regard.
Vision was merely the most challenging and the most enabling sense-avenue
that the author could choose as a way of getting general information into
the mind-model. The author begs the reader to judge the validity of the
linguistic model regardless of any invalidity of the visual model. The
author was able to advance to the development of the linguistic model only
after incorporation of the visual model into the sensorium/motorium grid as
an underlying assumption. Having used the visual model as a possibly false
lemma, the author would like to see the linguistic model prove valid no
matter what happens to the visual model.
Articles by Kent [2] enabled this author to develop the visual model.
The model as finally adopted resembles one which the author long resisted as
being probably too naive, until Kent's exposition of feature-extraction
engendered sufficient sophistication in the model as to override the
author's feelings of uneasiness.
As mentioned above, the visual memory channel flows down through the
leftmost side of the flat associative grid. Whereas the auditory memory
channel is visualized as flat, the visual memory channel is visualized as
more or less round, because it must contain two-dimensional image-slices.
However, the class of horizontal associative tags exiting the visual memory
channel can be regarded as flat.
The visual channel starts as a quasi-retina and passes through two
stages of pre-processing before entering the memory grid as an associable
memory channel.
The first stage of pre-processing is one in which this design allows
some time for self-organizing of the visual channel, hypothetically to
correspond to extreme infancy in humans. This model regards accurate visual
transmission as too great a burden to impose upon genetic design, which is
viewed here as part of a duality or polarity with design-by-learning. The
self-organizing stage has been allowed for and then left for later
development. Basically, the rationale is that the order peculiar to light
sources in the external world shall help to create an ordered arrangement of
visual transmission lines in the internal world.
The second stage of pre-processing is that of feature-extraction. The
reference by Kent can be consulted for details, but certain notions are
forthcoming here. A typical extraction might be that all retinal points
forming lines at a certain slant will converge into single memory fibers,
each of which will now unitarily represent a slanting line of multitudinous
points. The analog of the retinal optic nerve is modelled here as
consisting of about a million fibers. On the one hand, feature-extraction
will permit many retinal fibers to be represented by fewer memory fibers.
On the other hand, a single retinal fiber can serve as an input to multiple
features that are then extracted as multiple memory fibers. So there are
tendencies both to reduce and to multiply the number of visual transmission
lines.
The final inputs at the entrance to the visual memory channel are
visual memory lines that represent features rather than retinal points.
(These memory lines are called "fibers" above, lest they be confused with
lines in retinal geometry.) After more description of the visual channel, a
concept of "virtuality" will be explained as the rationale for adopting
feature-extraction.
The model of visual memory is quite analogous to that of auditory
memory. Again, moments of perception are pulsed into slices down through
the memory channel. Each slice corresponds to a feature-extracted visual
image. The slice cut through the transmission lines has hypothetically a
node for each transmission line. Each slice is genetically provided with a
tabula-rasa associative tag potentially integrating that slice with the
associative grid. The oldest visual images are laid down near the entrance,
or top, of the visual memory channel, and the newest images are gradually
being laid down at the slowly advancing, lower extremity of the channel.
The visual memory channel, in parallel with the other sensory (and perhaps
also motor) channels, is associatively connected to them at each instant by
virtue of simultaneity in the fixation of horizontal associative tags.
It is important to understand the concept of "virtuality" as the
author's rationale for adopting feature-extraction. The visual memory
channel has two purposes: that of a comparator of patterns, and that of a
memory. As a memory, the visual memory channel must associatively retain
images by fixating and tagging them. As a comparator, the visual memory
channel has the task of announcing to the system by associative tag whenever
it finds in memory a highly similar counterpart to either a fresh external
image or a reactivated internal image. For purposes of comparison, it would
certainly not work to store raw visual images without feature-extraction,
because the too detailed images would be too unwieldy to be processed by a
non-feature-extracting comparator. Feature-extraction allows the
comparator-mechanism to rise a workable distance above point-by-point
comparison. Meanwhile, some sharpness and resolution must probably be lost,
which loss must be compensated for, but how? And why do we not notice the
loss of fine detail? The answer proposed here lies in the concept of
"virtuality," which is the self-illusion of consciousness.
Throughout this paper, the author insists upon observing the
orthogonality of data-flows in the associative grid. Such observance is
mainly a help for thinking, because it would not matter if the assembled
physical grid were subsequently curved or convoluted. However, the
observance of orthogonality leads to a consideration of dimensionality in
general. For instance, processes which seem to meander in haphazard
directions can initially be difficult to explain. It has helped this author
to force emerging facets of "black-box" mechanisms into such orthogonal
structures as are described herein. Once orthogonality was compelled here
and there within a structure, the whole dimensionality of the structure
often became apparent. So it is with vision. The elucidation of
"virtuality' is now attempted with regard to "dimensionality."
According to this model, when we see an image through an eye, that
image briefly floods our whole visual memory channel. Any given
feature-extraction line, that happens to be activated throughout visual
memory as part of the image, is activating all the myriad historical nodes
that were ever fixated as "on" or "full" all up and down the used portion of
the transmission line. Within each memory slice of all our previous visual
experience, the perchance reactivated nodes are trying in summation to
combine forces and "vote" for the selection of their own visual image as the
most similar visual memory which ought to be the first, or even only, memory
slice to send out over its efferent associative tag a recall-signal. That
recall-signal is the announcement that the comparator, i.e., the whole
memory channel, is proffering a comparison. Note that that comparison is
never exact; it is just the one which has received the most "votes" from
nodes. (Does a Rorschach blot operate by exact comparison?) If we stare
long at the same image, many associations may come to mind, perhaps aided by
a mechanism of neuron-fatigue which would allow initially dominant
associations to yield to associations receiving fewer "votes."
The main idea here is that this model claims that we perceive visually
through a whole visual memory/comparison channel operating all at once in
extreme parallel-processing. It was claimed above, in the section on
audition, that the informational content of a memory channel could move not
only within the channel, but also orthogonally out of the channel. It may
seem that that claim loads quite a burden onto the associative tag, because
even the largest, fullest memory slice is modelled as having only a unitary
associative tag. However, the information escapes its own channel through
the "virtuality" of passing over all the associative tags of all the
counterpart slices with which it can successively be compared within its own
channel. Think of a visual image being rapidly dismantled through its
elemental components, each of which is perceived so rapidly through
in-channel comparison that the conscious mind is fooled into believing that
it is perceiving the image all at once. Viewed in this light, consciousness
itself becomes a flickering illusion in which we can never quite see the
gaping voids between the flickers.
The idea of dimensionality leads to an important, further point
involving recursiveness within the mind-model. A proposal is now made to
the effect that a valuable test of a perceptual model lies in determining
whether or not any information is lost as the information is processed
through transformations and reorganizations. For instance, the reader is
invited to ask himself or herself (as the author does), whether this visual
model suffers the loss of informational content over the orthogonal outputs
of its memory channel. If informational content remains rather constant, no
matter how circuitously the information flows throughout the system, then it
may turn out that the various aggregates of knowledge within the system are
defined recursively in terms of all the other aggregates of knowledge. When
we discuss the area of "transabstractivity," it may look as though the total
system is capable of generating new knowledge from within itself.
5. THE GENESIS OF THE PSYCHOLINGUISTIC MODEL
Now that the underlying models of the visual and auditory memory channels
have been explained, the rest of the article is devoted to presenting the
author's admittedly speculative but perhaps thought-provoking model of a
linguistic control system for natural language. Whereas the
sensorium/motorium grid has been presented here without much discussion of
its lackluster genesis, the author feels that explaining how he arrived at
his linguistic model will contribute to the reader's critical understanding
of the model and also to the reader's likelihood of seeing where mistakes
were made or of devising a much better model. If there is indeed a
contribution here, it is time to get help in assessing and developing it.
The author developed the various models and perspectives by maintaining
and sporadically writing in a "theory journal" from 1972 to 1979. In 1977
the fruitful decision was made to pursue the aforementioned dichotomy of
(relatively loose) pattern and (relatively exact) symbolic code.
Immediately a torrent of speculation resulted concerning the possible
interior organization of psychic structures for processing natural language.
The author toyed with elaborate structures for habituating phonemic strings,
and then foundered in an abortive attempt to devise a "habituated mechanism
for grammar." The problem was that the perceptual system for patterns had
not been elaborated, and therefore there was no base of experiential inputs
from which to derive control lines for mechanisms generating sentences. As
the eventually abortive grammar system became quite complicated, it really
became an empty shell as more and more of its control lines became dependent
upon the nonexistent perceptual system. A particularly vexing problem was
that of how the automaton would keep its languages apart if it knew more
than one natural language. The impetus of the duality-approach temporarily
ran out in October of 1977, and the project lay dormant for five months.
The appearance of Kent's articles in early 1978 led to the present
formulation of the visual channel. By November of 1978 the author had at
his disposal most of the model of the sensorium/motorium as described in
this article. He wanted to integrate the grammar work of the previous year
with the new overview of the various memory channels. The first step was to
halt at a new impasse involving verb-recall. The author would now like to
describe the slow removal of that impasse and the rapid development
thereafter of the present linguistic control system. That work culminated
in May of 1979 and the author turned to his present attempts at
communicating his results.
In November of 1978 the first obvious problem was to see how percepts
in the visual memory channel would fetch words stored in the auditory memory
channel. It seemed simple enough for a visual memory image representing an
object to activate a horizontal recall-tag for a noun naming that object.
After all, the model regarded both the visual memory slice and the auditory
memory string of the word (through its onset-tag) as unitary memory items
between which there could exist a one-to-one correspondence, established
through simultaneity in the fixation of the horizontal associative tags.
For a well-known, thoroughly habituated, concrete noun in the vocabulary of
the organism, there would be many randomly placed crossovers of recall
between the visual and auditory memory channels. When the organism saw the
given object, the percept coursing down through the visual memory channel
would stimulate or activate the many various instances where the image of
the object had been associated over to the noun. If the signal in just one
of many recall-tags reached the auditory memory channel, the noun would be
remembered.
The author was initially stymied with the problem of how the plurality
of nouns would be conveyed from the perceiving visual channel over to the
auditory memory channel storing the nouns. He quickly chose instead to be
stymied with the similar but more significant problem of how the visual
perception of actions would lead to the recall of verbs. For both plurality
and verb-recall, it seemed that no single visual percept, with its single
associative tag, could be sufficient to recall either a noun-plural, with
its added inflectional information, or a verb, with its complex information
involving subject and action, plus or minus object. For both phenomena,
plurality and verbs, it seemed that a bundle of visual percepts would be
necessary just to accumulate the raw information behind each phenomenon.
But even if such a bundle were activated within the visual memory channel,
the horizontal associative plane was too rigidly simple to transmit the
extra information gathered in the bundle. Although the roots of a solution
appeared right away in November of 1978, the tentative solution itself was
slow in coming via journal entries in January and March of 1979.
The rain root to the proposed solution was the idea in November of 1978
(in the theory journal) "that maybe there should be an additional memory
alongside the others (sensory and motor). a memory which held perceptual
content but not sensory content, a memory which would handle conceptual
associations beyond the linear scope of the purely sensory memories: an
abstract memory."
However, the person authoring these ideas could not make direct use of
them, but instead agonized until January of 1979 and then moved backwards
from the basic concept of a verb, through the notion of semantic categories
as inputs to the verb, and finally back again to the idea of an abstract
memory, as a place for the semantic categories to be represented.
The plan for verb-recall, as developed in January and March of 1979, is
that an abstract memory channel shall permit a process of "intermediation"
between raw percepts and stored verbs. It is therefore time to describe the
abstract memory channel.
6. THE MODEL OF THE ABSTRACT MEMORY
Within our above-described model of the experiential, left half of the
sensorium/motorium grid, the visual memory channel flows down along the left
side of the grid, and the auditory memory channel flows down along the right
side of the (experiential) grid. The abstract memory channel is to be
visualized not as a flat channel, but as a three-dimensional channel flowing
down through the experiential grid, in between vision on the left and
audition on the right. The abstract channel also sideways extends above and
covers the auditory memory channel so as to receive the perpendicular
outputs of the aforementioned "habituation-class" of associative
ultimate-tags rising from the auditory memory channel. The abstract memory
is a channel not attached to a sensor, and it would therefore remain empty
if it did not receive its inputs from the various "concrete" channels, such
as vision and audition. The abstract channel lies in parallel with the
concrete channels and it consists of myriad elongated "abstract" fibers or
lines analogous to the "transmission lines" of the concrete sensory
channels. However, the abstract memory channel is seen as subdivided into
"cables" or groups of lines specially organized to suit various purposes of
design. The dimensionality of the abstract channel is orthogonal, just as
the rest of this model is.
One function of the abstract memory channel is to intercept the
afferent associative tags coming from the visual memory, those tags which
might otherwise proceed directly to the auditory memory and control engrams
there. Those afferent associative tags from the visual memory channel flow
instead into the "logicoconceptual cable" (L-C cable) of the abstract memory
channel. That portion of the abstract channel is called "logicoconceptual"
because each of its fibers shall gather up interrelated inputs from vision
which in summation constitute a concept or an element of logic. (The
logical elements, associated with conjunctions, prepositions, and plurality,
may actually require further processing.) The abstract fiber of a concept
receives its inputs from vision and then in turn controls the recall-tags
which become the onset-tags of words stored in the auditory memory channel.
The logicoconceptual cable is visualized as being itself flat and lying flat
within the plane of the associative grid. However, the L-C cable has flat
layers within it. The afferent visual associative tags empty into the
basic, top layer of the L-C cable, which is the layer of the
logicoconceptual noun-lines. In other words, the top layer of the L-C cable
has fibers representing concepts and their nouns. It has direct control of
the recall-lines over to the stored nouns. A visual image must first
activate a noun-line in the L-C cable if the image is to activate
recall-lines for a stored noun.
The descending layers in the L-C cable represent various levels of
abstraction. The only secondary level modelled so far is for verbs, but
conjunctions, prepositions, and plurality may also have such layers.
The top level of the flat L-C cable, that of logicoconceptual
noun-lines, is the level of least abstraction. Beneath that level, but
moved sideways to the right and out of the way, is a flat level of
verb-lines controlling recall-lines heading to the right towards stored
verbs. Associative input-lines, or "feelers," move left from the flat level
of abstract verb-lines to flow directly underneath the logicoconceptual
noun-lines and receive inputs from them. The logicoconceptual noun-lines
serve as the above-mentioned "semantic categories" that are inputs in the
selection of a verb. Verbs are thus at least doubly abstracted from raw
visual perception. Each abstract verb-line sends its "feeler" out leftwards
underneath the flat, primary level of the abstract noun-lines. (Other
simple percepts may be mingled in with the noun-lines.) Thus the
input-feeler of each abstract verb-line has access to all the abstract
noun-lines, or "semantic categories." When a verb is to be recalled to
describe a visual percept, an extremely parallel differentiation-process
operates over all the verb-input-feelers that are sampling the status of
each relevant semantic category expressed among the noun-lines. At the
junctures of the feelers and the abstract noun-lines, there are nodes
fixated by learning. A (complex) verb which has both many nodes on its
feeler and most of them activated will win the recall-race over other verbs
with many feeler-nodes but few of them activated. The differentiation may
be enhanced if available but unactivated feeler-nodes serve to inhibit the
input-feeler to a verb-line. A (simple) verb with few feeler-nodes but all
of them activated could thus win out over a (complex) verb with many
activated and many unactivated feeler-nodes. (The feeler described here is
actually one of very many feelers for each verb-line.) The sentient being
that is bringing verbs to mind may not realize that the whole vocabulary of
verbs is competing. The differentiation-process makes possible both
malapropisms and flights of fancy.
The mentally proleptic reader may be realizing here that such abstract
cables will be used to control the parts of speech in syntax, but first the
function of the abstract logicoconceptual cable must be examined in greater
detail.
It is important to realize that the abstract memory channel always
operates upon the basis of old, rather than fresh, memory data. This notion
of reliance upon past experience makes sense if the abstract memory channel
is a habituated mechanism. This dependency upon past experience becomes
clear if we examine how the "abstract fibers" operate. For consistency,
only vertical fibers flowing within the abstract memory channel and in
parallel with all the other memory channels shall be called "abstract." Any
horizontal or perpendicular associative lines or fibers making contact with
an abstract fiber shall be called "concrete," to highlight the distinction
between the "abstract" fibers of extended experience and the momentary
associative fibers that represent a "concrete" influence upon, or function
of, the abstract fibers.
When an intelligent organism sees the bundle of visual images which
constitute the raw information capable of ultimately fetching or recalling a
stored verb, the process of abstraction begins immediately. The images
within the bundle are deposited in their proper order at the freshest
extremity of the visual channel, but these images at the freshest extremity
of the channel can not send out signals sideways to activate the necessary
abstract fibers within the logicoconceptual cable. As may be clear from
previous portions of this article, fresh association can occur through
simultaneity, but instances of recall must filter through associative
pathways laid down in the past. Since the fetching of a stored verb is
recall rather than fresh association, the images in the verb-input bundle
must all do their best to activate highly similar counterpart-slices down
through the visual memory channel. These counterpart-slices, and not the
fresh images, will then associatively access abstract fibers in the
logicoconceptual cable.
Notice that such spread-out routing of information as inputs for access
to verbs permits the process of verb-recall to be a rather
catch-as-catch-can, labile, loosely configurational process. Remember,
practically all verbs in the active vocabulary end up competing to be the
verb which is consciously recalled within the auditory memory channel. The
process described here is not meant as faulty or hit-and-miss; rather, the
idea is to let such a variety and wealth of inputs serve in selection of
verbs that fine differences and subtle nuances can sway the
selection-process into vectoring towards the most apt and descriptive verb
to name an action or a state of being.
An abstract fiber, or cable of such fibers, stands in remarkable
isolation. The abstract fiber flows down through the abstract memory
channel, hypothetically perhaps for a distance as long as the channel
itself. Although some provision is to be made for the control of cables of
abstract fibers in syntax, the individual abstract fiber of the
logicoconceptual cable unitarily accepts myriad "concrete" associative
inputs and governs myriad "concrete" associative outputs.
The abstract fiber accomplishes its feat of logicoconceptual
abstraction by allowing a great leeway in its inputs while insisting upon a
rather restricted target for its outputs: a stored word or morpheme in the
auditory memory channel. For instance, an English-speaking organism may
permit many sorts of images of a dog to access the stored word, "dog." Of
course, a single image stored in the visual memory channel can perhaps be
associated over to several or many abstract lines, so that varying degrees
of differentiation or specificity can occur. Thus a speaker might refer to
a "dog" or to a particular species of dog.
The important consideration here is that these processes of selection
are forms of extremely broad and parallel competition. Not only do
practically all the verbs in an active vocabulary compete, but, from a given
abstract line that is going to access the winning verb, there are many
competing concrete associative recall-lines going over as the onset-tags of
various historical instances of the recording of that verb here and there in
the auditory memory channel. It may be that only the more recent instances
are likely to win out, so that verbal memory can gradually shift or mature
over time, but the abstract fiber is not limited to a single, possibly
unreliable, concrete recall-line as an output. Such availability of
multiple, but essentially identical, output-lines can perhaps be viewed as
an automatic error-reducing mechanism of redundancy.
As was mentioned above, a bundle of input-images for verb-selection
will be deposited at the freshest extremity of the visual memory channel,
after using the internal comparison-mechanism of the visual memory channel
to gain access, via horizontal associative lines, to relevant abstract
fibers in the logicoconceptual cable. Only after such "supratraversial"
associative activation of the abstract fibers can each fresh image-slice,
being newly deposited, enter into a fresh associative interconnection with
its relevant abstract fiber (or perhaps fibers) at the freshest extremity of
both the visual and abstract memory channels. Thus, although language is
always used as a habit from the past, there are mechanisms, all along the
advancing front between experience and tabula rasa, for the constant
reaffirmation, updating, and perhaps gradual change of the way in which a
mind perceives and interprets its world.
7. THE BASIC MODEL OF SYNTAX
The foregoing sections of this paper have modelled systems of information-
flow in basic automatic routing where one flow of information did not govern
another. A fresh, unitary flow of information within a sensory channel
might associatively scatter eddies and ripples throughout much of the
associative memory grid, but such propagation of signals can still be viewed
as the single dispersal of a single flow. Syntax, however, involves letting
one (habituated, permanent) flow of information control other (freely
associated, transitory) flows of information.
The above described layers of the abstract logicoconceptual cable will
serve to contain some of the transitory flows of information which syntax
will control. Whereas the logicoconceptual cable lies in the plane of the
flat associative memory grid, we now posit an abstract "syntax cable" lying
in a second tier of the abstract memory channel, above and covering both the
logicoconceptual cable and the auditory memory channel. The syntax cable
will control flows of information within the logicoconceptual cable and the
auditory memory channel.
The auditory memory channel is unique among memory channels, because,
according to this model, it is where conscious verbal thought occurs. The
auditory memory channel is a self-perceiving channel. Syntax generates
sentences by stringing together morphemes and words residing directly within
the auditory memory channel.
The basic function of the syntax cable is now described, although the
development of the syntax cable is left for the section on the habituation
of grammar.
A textbook by Liles [3] provided this author with some knowledge of
Chomskyan transformational grammar. This paper confines itself to a simple
example of syntax and does not treat the selection of transformations. The
following discussion of how syntax strings a sentence together is based upon
a notion of a very simple English sentence consisting of a noun as subject,
a verb, and another noun as direct object of the verb. Almost everything
but word-order is disregarded here. The sentence is probably a slightly
ungrammatical one, such as a baby might utter, e.g., "Daddy drink water,"
without the inflectional ending on the verb. Inflection is treated in the
next section of this paper.
Although transformational grammar expresses such a simple sentence as
the tripartite one above as a tree with nodes, this section of the article
is concerned with syntactic nodes only in a row representing surface
structure. In other words, somehow (explained further on in this paper) the
syntax cable will have assembled a sequential series of nodes representing
and controlling sentence-elements that are to be activated in the same order
as that of the nodes, so as to string together a sentence.
The volitional aspect of why the sentence is thought or uttered is not
treated deeply here. As for the mere thinking or generation of the
sentence, without regard to motor utterance, it does not matter much whether
we imagine that syntactic structures are always waiting for the opportunity
automatically to assert themselves, or whether an activated mechanism of
attention initiates the operation of a syntactic structure (i.e., one of the
possible transformations, including what could be regarded as the
untransformed, original one). Here we are merely examining how a syntactic
structure, once activated, would generate a rather concrete sentence to
describe what is being observed through the visual memory channel.
Further to eliminate volition from our discussion, let the following be
considered. Once the components of a sentence have been assembled, or, to
express the idea more carefully, are being assembled within the auditory
memory channel, that sentence is free to move down within the auditory
memory channel and to deposit itself in a quasi-capsule at the freshest
extremity of the channel. As was stated in the section on the auditory
memory channel, "old, internal, associative-tag-activated data" will
"traverse the auditory memory channel into fixation at its freshest
extremity." Thus the elements of the sentence may be gathered from randomly
and widely varying locations up and down the auditory memory channel, but
the sentence coalesces into an integral whole when it is deposited
automatically at the freshest extremity of the channel. Now, motor volition
is modelled here as a sort of shifting valence topography of integrating
associative potentials dynamically moving, at the elongated associative
interface between experiential and motor memory, either towards or away from
threshold firing-levels at which positive volitional motor activation occurs
automatically, but premeditatively. Physical, motor utterance of a sentence
can occur either as the sentence is being generated up and down the auditory
memory channel, or after the sentence-capsule has been gathered at the
freshest extremity serving as a kind of "pre-elocution register." The
reader will please forgive the author for brushing aside the perhaps
tantalizing topic of motor volition, but it is not essential to the
linguistic model which the author is eager to communicate first.
We now examine the generation of an English sentence under the control
of three serial syntactic nodes in the syntax cable of the abstract memory
channel. Let the sentence be the slightly incorrect one mentioned above,
"Daddy drink water." Therefore the three syntactic nodes are one for a noun
as subject, one for a verb, and one for a noun as direct object of the verb.
Each syntactic node within the syntax cable is actually an elongated
abstract memory fiber. Viewed in a cross-slice, it has the unitary quality
of being a node, but its elongation through the channel allows it to operate
in myriad instances extended over time. The syntactic node-fiber enjoys the
isolation attributed to abstract fibers above, in that it is itself
unitarily abstract, while access to and from it must occur via the myriad
concrete associative lines.
Each of the three syntactic node-fibers is associated with the part of
speech which it will activate within the auditory memory channel during the
generation of a sentence. Although the syntactic node is associated with
all members of the class of its part of speech, it must select and activate
within the auditory memory channel only one member of the class. In other
words, each syntactic node must propose only one candidate-word for a
particular spot in the sequence of a sentence being generated. Each
syntactic node has concrete associative lines descending to access and
govern a whole part-of-speech layer within the logicoconceptual cable.
Thus the first syntactic node for our sentence, representing a noun as
subject of the verb, accesses and controls the whole noun-layer of the
logicoconceptual cable. At the transitory moment of its activation, the
syntactic node-fiber "flushes out" from the whole noun-layer whichever noun
happens to be "voted for" most strongly on the basis of present inputs from
visual perception. The noun-layer, while awaiting a flush-signal from the
syntactic node, is to be viewed as being normally inhibited from activating
its myriad recall-lines that are the onset-tags of morphemes and words
stored in the auditory memory channel. A flush-signal from the syntactic
node for subject nouns briefly disinhibits the whole noun-layer to let the
perceptually dominant noun escape over to the auditory memory channel.
Activation of the onset-tag of that noun causes its phonemic string to be
consciously "heard" or "perceived" within the auditory memory channel. The
phonemic string travels to the freshest extremity, where it is redeposited
by fixation.
The activation of the phonemic string is terminated by the ultimate-tag
which rises perpendicularly from the string up into the syntax cable. The
ultimate-tag from the stored word signals to the syntax cable that the
firing of the first syntactic node has produced its results. Control is now
passed sequentially to the next syntactic node, that of the verb for our
sentence.
The syntactic node-fiber for verbs flushes out a perceptually dominant
verb from the verb-layer of the logicoconceptual cable. At the speed of
thought, the verb is now activated, is now "thought," within the auditory
memory channel. A signal rises along the ultimate-tag of the verb up into
the syntax cable to pass control from the verb-node on to the noun-node for
the direct object of the verb.
Neuron-fatigue, plus a slight shift or alteration in perception, will
prevent the originally dominant subject-noun ("Daddy") from firing again
when the syntactic node-fiber for a noun as direct object is trying to flush
out a noun as the final word in the sentence. The noun which actually
represents the direct object should be perceptually dominant and should be
flushed out for recall-activation in the auditory memory channel. When the
ultimate-tag of this final word fires, control can be passed perhaps to a
new sentence or to a new focus of attention.
The syntactic control-structure causes control to loop quickly in and
out of the self-perceiving auditory memory channel at the speed of thought.
Although the process is happening over a much wider area than the auditory
memory channel alone, the thinking organism is conscious only of the results
surfacing within the auditory memory channel. The words seem to flow
together naturally and without pause, because the syntactic control
structure operates so quickly and automatically. Thoughts are not
especially "willed," they just occur to a person's mind and help formulate
the person's will.
So-called "Freudian slips" of the tongue may occur when a residually
dominant concept in the logicoconceptual cable is originally present because
of one instance of perhaps strong mentation, and then the concept interferes
in a new instance of perhaps weak mentation. If a silent but strongly
dominant concept within the logicoconceptual cable does not have time to
subside before an unrelated sentence is spoken, a "Freudian slip" can occur
involuntarily. In this vein, the author has not yet analyzed how
spoonerisms might occur.
The problem of how to keep multiple natural languages apart within a
fluently multilingual mind may be solved by certain features of this model.
Each syntactic structure is probably learned as pertaining to a specific
language. Then the syntactic nodes of the structure can probably access
only classes of parts of speech containing words that have customarily been
included within the vocabulary of the specific language. There probably do
not have to be multiple noun-layers and multiple verb-layers within the
logicoconceptual cable. Instead, the descending concrete associative fibers
from syntactic nodes of a particular language probably access (in blanket
fashion) only words of that particular language. Thus a person fluent in
several languages can speak continuously in one language without
interference from the grammar or vocabulary of any other language. Note
that persons who are not truly fluent will still have problems, because they
are frequently stopping and thinking, that is, associating every which way,
even into divergent languages.
8. AN EXAMPLE OF THE MODEL OF INFLECTION
Although English was kept in mind during the development of the basic model
of syntax, the model of inflection was developed with a view to such highly
inflected languages as Latin and Russian. This paper now presents a rather
circumscribed example of how the linguistic control system for inflection
would operate in just one instance. The author developed this model in May
of 1979, and is eager to communicate it before entering a more leisurely
phase of examining many specific or universal aspects of inflection.
Suppose that a cybernetic organism is operating in the Russian language
and must discriminate between the nominative and accusative forms in the
singular number of the Russian noun for "Moscow," which we transliterate
here as "Moskva." The nominative form will accordingly be "Moskva" and the
accusative form "Moskvu." In the sentence being generated, the mind must
use "Moskv-" as a stem and automatically decide whether to add the ending
"a" or "u."
Within the model of syntax in the foregoing section of this paper, a
noun such as "Moskva" is controlled by a syntactic node-fiber which guides
the process of recall resulting in the activation of the phonemic string of
the noun down through the auditory memory channel. Two aspects of that
model must now be changed.
Firstly, the syntactic node-fiber will not access the complete phonemic
string, "Moskva." Instead, only the stem "Moskv-" will be accessed. Of
course, such a stem has an ultimate-tag rising perpendicularly out of the
auditory memory channel and into the syntax cable. We will use the
ultimate-tag as one of two converging inputs necessary for the selection of
the proper case-ending within the paradigmatic engrams of the declension of
Russian nouns like "Moskva" in the singular number. (English-speakers are
familiar with many such Russian nouns: "vodka," "beluga," "tundra,"
"Pravda" - to name a few.)
Secondly, the syntactic node-fiber governing the noun will now have an
additional output beyond that which merely flushes the recall-line of the
noun-stem out of the logicoconceptual cable. This new output of the
syntactic node-fiber is to be called a "function-vector" and it is based
upon the grammatical position and function of the noun within the syntactic
string of the sentence. Although we speak of a single function-vector, we
really mean numerous concrete associative lines exiting the unitary,
abstract syntactic node-fiber. Since these associative vector-lines are all
going to the same destination over the short run, we can speak as if there
were a single function-vector. Of course, over the long run, a neophyte's
use of inflectional endings might change by improving or maturing.
In our Russian example, one syntactic node-fiber is perhaps trying to
flush out a noun that will be in the nominative case as the subject of a
verb. Another syntactic node-fiber is trying to flush out a noun that will
be in the accusative case as the direct object of a verb. Let us examine
how the system generates the form of the noun in the accusative case-
"Moskvu" instead of "Moskva."
The flush-line, or "recall-vector," of the syntactic node-fiber flushes
out the recall-line for the stem "Moskv-" from the logicoconceptual cable.
Meanwhile, the function-vector of the syntactic node-fiber simultaneously
sends a signal into a portion of the syntax cable called the "function
cable." This function cable is a group of abstract control-fibers or
"bars." Each specific control-bar in the function cable receives inputs
only from syntactic node-fibers representing certain grammatical functions
that require always the same grammatical case. For instance, in our Russian
example, possibly several syntactic node-fibers representing direct objects
of verbs and accusative objects of prepositions can send their function-
vectors to the same accusative-case control-bar within the function cable.
Thus the function cable serves as a collecting-point for function-vectors
and, as we shall see, as a distribution-point for case-activation lines
leading to all declensions.
The signal from our Russian example of a syntactic node-fiber
generating an accusative direct-object form comes into the function cable
and activates a control-bar representing the search for an accusative ending
to the noun-stem "Moskv-" presently being activated within the auditory
memory channel. The accusative-case control-bar in turn sends out semi-
activating signals to all accusative-case endings in all Russian declensions
available within the system.
The syntactic node-fiber does not "know" in advance the particular
declension (among several Russian declensions) to which the flushed-out
noun-stem will chance to belong. Only the noun-stem itself is associatively
privy to that information. Therefore the function cable must blanket-access
and pre-poise all appropriate case-endings in all declensions. We shall
name as the "inflection cable" that portion of the syntax cable which
contains the various Russian declensions as clusters of abstract
inflectional lines controlling concrete associative recall-lines for
specific case-endings stored as morphemes in the auditory memory channel.
Now the two separate inputs must converge within the inflection cable
to select the accusative singular ending "u" for the activated stem
"Moskv-." The ending "u" is pre-poised or semi-activated when the
accusative-case control-bar blanket-accesses all declensions. Final and
full activation of the ending "u" occurs when the ultimate-tag from the end
of the fetched stem "Moskv-" carries a signal from the auditory memory
channel into the proper declension-cluster within the inflection cable.
Thus an intersection of two fan-outs occurs. Syntax distributively
accesses all accusative endings, and the fetched noun-stem collectively
accesses all the possible endings peculiar to its own declension. Thus the
stem "Moskv-" and the ending "u" are combined to yield the accusative
singular form "Moskvu" of the Russian noun for "Moscow." Of course, the
Russians, a nation of poets, sometimes have their choice between equivalent
forms of an inflectional ending, but there are additional factors easily
governing the exercise of that choice. Typically, a set, habituated form
will come to mind, and then conscious purposes of poesy or archaism can
cause the substitution of an equivalent form for the originally occurring
form.
9. THE MODEL OF LINGUISTIC HABITUATION
Now that examples of basic syntax and rudimentary inflection have been
presented, the author offers a general insight into how syntactic structures
might come to be habituated in a mind. These thoughts on the habituation or
"learning" of language cover how a mind shall learn to generate sentences.
The comprehension of sentences, although expected to be more or less a
reversal of these processes of generation, is an area of further enquiry
from which the author has temporarily withdrawn in his eagerness to
communicate what tentative results are already at hand. Of course, the
author realizes that comprehension must both precede and accompany that
learning by which either a human infant or a newly assembled automaton will
habituate syntactic mechanisms for the generation of sentences.
The whole abstract memory channel, proposed here as the essential and
enabling medium for the linguistic control of data-flows, has been
hypothetically divided into several cables in this paper. First it was
divided into a "syntax cable," which operated upon an underlying
"logicoconceptual cable." Then the syntax cable was described as containing
the special mechanisms of a "function cable" and an "inflection cable." In
general, the author has found that it is easier and more productive to
imagine a superfluous cable that can be eliminated if found unnecessary,
than to suffer the frustration of overcaution when a lacking cable would be
really valuable if dreamed up for incorporation into the design. An
abstract cable can be valuable even if it serves temporarily only to buffer
and isolate two mechanisms in the plan of the designer. Accordingly, the
author freely designed various cables in May of 1979 in such numbers that
the presently described possibility for habituation suddenly appeared.
The genesis of this model of habituation followed the idea that first
nouns would be learned, and then verbs. First a syntactic node-fiber
controlling nouns would be used and practiced so repeatedly as to constitute
habituation. Then the organism would become aware that it was also
encountering verbs in its environment of language-speaking entities. In our
model here, which is now English, verbs are to be associated with the nouns
which are their subjects. However, the verb-controlling syntactic node-
fiber becomes habitually operative only after the operation of the noun-
controlling syntactic node-fiber has been thoroughly and permanently
habituated. The key element in the sequenced habituation of the syntactic
nodes is the aforementioned "habituation-class" of the ultimate-tags from
the auditory memory channel.
An ultimate-tag serves as a signal to return control of the sentence-
generating process to the syntax cable. Once the control of English nouns
is habituated, it is easy for the signals in ultimate-tags from nouns to
serve as stimuli to trigger the activation of an erstwhile unhabituated
syntactic node-fiber controlling verbs. Over time, any naturally occurring
syntactic node-fiber can be added to the syntactic string, because each
syntactic node-fiber becomes habituationally active when the morphological
phenomenon behind it is being dealt with by the young or curious mind, and
because the same syntactic node-fiber becomes habituationally dormant or
"transparent" when it has been "embedded" in the syntactic string and the
mind is dealing with a new, typically more subtle phenomenon. Thus a
syntactic node-fiber for nouns as direct objects can be added to the string
after the habituation of verbs.
The habituation process forms a gradual spiral over lengthy time in the
following manner. Suppose that we start with a positionally superior,
syntactic node-fiber for nouns, controlling the positionally inferior noun-
layer in the logicoconceptual cable. Thus we have the first downward
movement in our spiral, which, by the way, will actually be composed of
square-like coils strung together.
The logicoconceptual cable sends signals out horizontally to the right
to access nouns stored in the auditory memory channel. Then ultimate-tags
from accessed nouns rise perpendicularly from the auditory memory channel
into the upper tier of the syntax cable. There the ultimate-tags meet and
connect with horizontal concrete associative lines that flow leftwards to
begin activation, not of the already habituated, dormant noun-node, but of
the newly active verb-node, or syntactic node-fiber for the control of
verbs. Thus the loop of habituation has gone full circle. The process
slowly, over many months in the case of humans, continues to loop around,
adding various syntactic nodes in a spiral of habituation.
The model of linguistic habituation presented here is new to the author
and rather simple, but it may serve as a basis for quite complex
elaborations. The author advises that orthogonality should be observed in
any elaborations, even those of syntactic "trees." In other words, branches
drawn in syntactic trees should contain no angles other than ninety-degree
right angles, so that each tree will mesh and conform with the structures
around it in the orthogonal model.
10. THE NOTION OF "TRANSABSTRACTIVITY"
Within this general model, since the aggregates of conceptual knowledge join
pyramidally to culminate punctiformly in highly manipulable words of
symbolic code, the conscious, thinking mind can almost endlessly generate
thought-sentences by skimming through the uppermost levels of conceptuality,
constantly descending only to that depth automatically determined by the
free interassociativity of the interacting conceptual aggregates. What we
call an "abstraction" or "abstract concept" is modelled here as a pyramidal
aggregate of conceptual knowledge, which becomes abstract through the highly
manipulable "punctiformity" of its associable tip: the word. Since the
mind is modelled here as skimming rapidly across countless such tips, it
seems apt and useful to call this uppermost abstract level the level of
"transabstractivity."
REFERENCES
1. Keller, Helen, "The Story of My Life" (Grosset and Dunlap, New York,
1903).
2. Kent, Ernest W., The brains of men and machines, "BYTE", Vol. 3, Nos. 1-
3 (January, February, March, 1978).
3. Liles, Bruce L., "An Introductory Transformational Grammar" (Prentice-
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1971).
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