 Good afternoon. So we have been talking about the design features of natural languages. And so far, we have listed some features like, please check your notebook. We have listed features like languages, species specific, languages, species uniform, languages culturally, languages culturally transmitted, language varies and languages, languages arbitrarily, languages vocal, language is open-ended, language varies according to region, class, cost, subject, a whole lot of things, varies according to region, place, people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Today and tomorrow. And it is these reasons. It is these features that make language, natural languages, a unique medium of communication. No man-made medium has all these features. We cannot say all human beings know painting. We cannot say animals also know this or that. We cannot say that painting changes according to region. We cannot say that about music. We cannot say that about spy language or computer language. We cannot say that computer languages are culturally transmitted or they are arbitrary. They are based on logic. Natural language also has a lot of logic, but not entirely. The meaning we saw is arbitrary. There is no reason why a pen should be called a pen and a shirt should be called a shirt. And why the same thing should have different names in different languages? Or why should one word indicate one thing in one language and another thing in another language? There is a bit of arbitrariness in natural languages. We'll talk about one or two other features and then we will begin talking about the structure of natural languages. Are you all right? Are you comfortable? Say yes or no, please. Are we together? Yes, sir. Great. Wonderful. We are today going to talk about another feature, which is generally described as please write creative. Language is creative. By which I mean using the same words, using the same rules, using the same units, same sounds, same words, same or similar sentences, you can say new things. This is what poets do all the time. They do all the time. They use the same good old words and make new sentences out of them. Say, for example, the line I have quoted from a poet called Thomas Stearns Elliot, a great poet, a Nobel Prize winner, 1922, Nobel Prize in Literature, an American born in the family of bankers, moved to England, took poetry writing as his career, took literature as his career, and wrote some great poems, including one called Wasteland. Wonderful poem. You should, before you are 35 or 40, after you leave this institute, you might find to look at that 400 line poem. It's a wonderful piece of work. He wrote other poems as well. And from one of these poems, I've taken this line in my beginning is my end. Is that possible? How can you have your end in your beginning? But poets can say unusual things. Poets can say new things. And poets can say new things because it is possible for us to say new things in language. Using the same words, we can say things which nobody has said before. Is that? Do you agree? Do you agree? Yes or no, please? Do you agree? Yes. Using the same good old words, the same 5,000, 50,000, 75,000 words, we can always say new things. Or we can use old words in new meanings. Say, for example, when computers came, we did not sit down together and said, look, now this machine has come. Let us create a vocabulary for this machine. Actually, computer used to be a man in survey teams. If you have done some civil engineering, you might have gone through some elementary lessons in surveying. How many people have done that here? No one? In civil engineering, you survey land, topography. So for example, when Colonel Everest, have you heard of Colonel Everest? He was the director general of the Survey of India in the 19th century. So when he went to survey the topography of the Himalayas, he had a team of scientists, technicians, clerks, administrators. And he had one computer, a man, a gentleman. His computer, a man called Radhanath Sikdar. There was a Bengali gentleman. His official designation was computer. And he computed the elevation of Mount Everest. And he computed it almost as correctly as modern computers using GPS and other things do. He's considered to be wrong by less than 50 feet. He said 29,100 something. It is not 100 something. It is 2,029,130 or 35. That's about all. His official designation was computer. But now, if I call you computer, would you be happy? You will be happy if I call you computer software designer, chief architect. The official designation of many chiefs of IT companies is COO, chief operating officer, a chief computer architect. They don't like calling themselves chief executive officer. But nobody likes being called a computer today because it means so much more mechanical, so much more driven by algorithms, principles, so much more oriented. Lots of words. Look at the picture of a computer. For every part you have a name, but all those names were used for something else before. See the monitor, the screen. The screen used to be made of textile, of clothes. Do you have textile screen for computer today? Do you think it is likely? Yes or no? How many people think we'll have textile screen for computer in the next 10 years? Let me see. No one? We don't know. In engineering always throw surprises at you until personal computers came. Computer used to be one source of endless pain. Ask your professors who grew up on those computers. Entire day you keep punching cards. Then at the end it gave you one or two lines. But then came personal computers. Then came laptops and mobiles. I remember at this institute when laptops came, only three professors had it. The director had it. The deputy director had it. And somebody in computer science had it. And they took their computers to the dining hall, to the bathroom, just to show up. Today nobody bothers. Even my wife has a laptop computer. I don't know what she uses it for. So it has everything. What you call a speaker. What you call monitor. What you call CPU. What you call keyboard. In everything all of these names were in use already. Typewriters had keyboard. Before that keyboards were those boards were keys were hung in houses. Houses had locks. And there was a central place where you would hang keys. That is in the nature of technology. When new machine comes, new words do not come suddenly. When car came, suddenly you did not have a whole lot of new vocabulary. But then how did you get those words? The car, the seat, the wheel, the axle, the spring, the steering. Where did the steering comes from? Naval architecture from boats. So this is a part of the creative nature of language. It's a part of the creativity in language that you can always use old words for new things. Or you can extend the meaning. New meaning can be assigned. Look at the word mouse. What a pity. I sometimes wonder why did they call it mouse? Why did they not call it something else? At least a cat or a lion or something else. Maybe because it looks like a mouse. Do you think it looks like a mouse? I don't know. In my part of the country, I see a lot of people keeping bitter leaves in a box like that. So maybe I would have called it something else. But everything that you see here has a name. And all of these names had a different meaning until computers came. A speaker. A speaker was a human being. A speaker was not a machine. A speaker was an official. The person who presided in parliament was called a speaker who spoke for the entire parliament. But we changed the meaning. And new things came in use. So language is creative. There is no law saying that you can use cow only for cow. You can use cow for lion. You can use cow for snake. You can use anything you like. Language is your property. Nature has given you to you. Use it any way you like. There is no restriction there. You can always make new sentences, no matter how long the sentence is. No matter how long a sentence is. You can always add something. I'm going to give you a party game with you. Suppose I have a sentence. I say this is the cat. Add something. Then somebody said that ate the mouse. Can you add something to it now? Sorry, loud enough, please. Can you stand up and speak so that the microphone catches it? Come on, please. You have a wonderful completion. Everybody is going to talk. But maybe you will begin in that room. Yes, now add something to in that room. Somebody else, please. Which has white color? Which has white color. Come again. Please add something to it. And drank milk. And drank milk. Lovely. Come on, please. Give me some another extension. Come on, please. And drank milk. Which is on the stove. Which is on the stove. Wonderful. Great. You have a very delicious imagination. Come on, please. Somebody else? One more? And ran away. Sorry? And ran away. And ran away. You are going to complete the sentence. This is a game. Children play in children's in kindergarten schools. This is a long sentence. This is the cat that ate the mouse, that ate the corn, that lay in the house, that jack built. Or you can start in the first step further. This is the priest. This is the priest that married the old tatter and torn, et cetera, et cetera. That kept, take out that horn, the dog, that worried the cat, that chased the rat, that ate the corn, that lay in the house, that jack built. You can endlessly go on, because language has that capacity. That is why all human beings, regardless of education, regardless of position, regardless of the fact that they are professors or clerks, everybody can use it. And everybody can use it for their particular, peculiar, unique purposes. When you look at the hostile language, you see words come from different sources, Hindi, Telugu. And they are made to mean exactly the same thing that BTECs at this institute decide it should mean. You can also say things that are not true. Human beings, I was telling you the other day, are the only creatures who can tell lies. The dog cannot tell lies. Lion cannot tell lies. Snake cannot tell lies. They can only tell you what has happened, if at all. But human beings can do one thing, tell you another. I routinely ask you, are we together? And you say, yes, I know where you are, and it's all right. It happens. This is part of the truth. We can do a lot of wonderful things. Look at this book, the cover of this book, Gully-Verse Travels. Have you heard of this book? A great book of Satire written by Jonathan Swift. If you haven't read this book so far, please read this book during the coming winter vacation. One of the great books ever written. The simple message it gives is, don't be too proud. You may be a BTEC from X Institute or Y Institute. You may be an MBA from here or there. You may be tall or fair or rich or clever. But there always are people richer than you, cleverer than you, taller than you, more intelligent and luckier than you. This book, Gully-Verse Travels, has anyone read it? Have you heard about this book? Can anyone please tell me what is this book about? I want the camera to catch you, so that the viewers don't think that there were no students in this class. The teacher talked only to the camera. Come on, please, somebody. Yes, Ma, you have read it. Yeah, Gully-Verse, yes. They are afraid of this wave in the beginning, but later he helps them out. Correct. Thank you. You know, this book has four tales, Gully-Verse Tales or Gully-Verse Travels. Gully-Verse is a sea captain. He goes out on ships, on voyages, and once his ship is wrecked in a storm and he is thrown off, he floats, survives, floats onto an island. And when he wakes up, he finds himself surrounded by creatures that look like human beings. But these human beings are very small, only six inches. How much would be six inches? One span, perhaps. Okay, just six inches. Look at the picture. They are all around him. And Gully-Verse is, wow, I am a giant. I am so big. Okay? But next time, some three, four, five years later, Gully-Verse is shipwrecked again. And this time, he finds himself on an island where inhabitants are truly giants. The daughter of the king of that island picks up Gully-Verse like she used to pick up her dolls. She would pick up Gully-Verse, keep him on her table, play with him, then gently keep him back. And Gully-Verse was so frightened because when she picked him up and threw him up, he thought he was being thrown up 25 feet above the ground. Now, do you think such things exist? We do not know. We do not know. We do not know the entire universe. We do not know the entire cosmos. Maybe there. But from what we know, there is no such universe. So human beings, but human beings have the capacity to tell things, to speak about things, actually even to cry and laugh. When we go to watch cinema, I find some people in OAT bring three or four handkerchiefs, okay? Particularly when there is Telugu movie or Hindi movie, you know, in the last scene or real scene before last, everything is settled. The girl is about to put the garland around the hero, and then suddenly the villain comes, or the mother comes and says, no, no, don't do this. He is not the son of the rich man, or she is not the son of the daughter of the rich woman. Something happens and lots of crying. All of us know. Everybody there knows it is untrue, right? When we go to OAT or when we go to watch a play, we know it's not true, right? And yet we cry. We get angry when the villain is punched. We feel, wow, right thing is happening. Give him one from my side as well, please. We feel angry, we start sweating, or we laugh, we cry. None of these things is true. But human language has the capacity to make it possible, to do it, okay? But human language can talk of things which have not been experienced, not happened. Please write creative. That is because languages, languages creative. We can always say new things. We can always make old words mean new ways, okay? We can always come up with new sentences. We can always say things that are not true. Or we can use one thing for more than one meaning. It's a boot in computer today has one meaning. But the original meaning of boot is a footwear. In slang, in the 18th, 19th century, it also meant a woman who was very difficult, you know? Many young men called their mother Silla a boot. She is an old boot. In 18th century slang, in 18th, 19th century slang, in England a difficult woman was also called an old boot, an ugly boot. Or boot is a process in computer, you know? Your computer has booted, or would you abort, or would you retry? Okay, computer asks you, boot, abort, or retry. This is a wonderful poem written by a computer scientist. Finally, when computer asks me at midnight, I'm about to go to a cinema or movie with a friend and computer asks me, boot, abort, or retry. It's a wonderful poem. Must find it on the net and read it. Similarly, look at your own words, you know? The kind of words, kind of jargon I hear in IIT, hostel sector. Until I came here, I had thought cup meant a cup in which you drank tea. But after coming here, I learned, no, cup is a grade, which is given to people who don't attend classes regularly. Or, you know, when I came here, one day, somebody asked me, sir, why has that person got a good grade? I say, what's the problem? He just chumma tooling around. I thought tooling meant hard work. They got tool and tooling. In those days, electrical engineering, et cetera, et cetera, they had tools. Today, I think you do everything virtual engineering only on computer. Or are you still trained in using tools? Do you still have workshop? Lovely. So I thought tooling was a good thing. But later, I discovered the tooling in IIT, Madras, jargon meant going about doing nothing. You know, going from this canteen to that canteen to OAT, to Taramani, to Velachery, except everywhere, except in classes and labs and laboratories and libraries. So that person is tooling around meant that person is wandering like a cloud. Or dish. I heard, I thought dish was a lovely thing, you know. We pay for it and we eat. But somebody here told me that dish also means Amanda. Now dish it. Means stop doing it. Or ditch it. Our showcase used to be known. But now people in management studies also use showcase as verb. Showcase it. I say how can you showcase it? You can show something in the showcase. You can show something in the showcase. But then you say why you have two shows? We can just showcase it. That means it can be used as a verb. India has an entire tradition of stories where animals behave like human beings. Do you know the name of that book? Collection of stories where animals, birds, panch tantra, where birds, other kinds of creatures from the animal world fight, have quarrels, have friendships, have alliances, have treaties, have conversations, etc. It's called panch tantra. Does anyone know why is it called panch tantra? Five. Five? Five models. It has five models. Great. It has five models. How to make friends, how to conquer enemies, how to plant differences in the camp of enemies, etc. There are five lessons in people management. That is why it is called mitralav, mitraved, etc. There are five different kinds. You must read some of these books in any language. It doesn't matter. If you don't know Sanskrit, I'm sure there are copy translations in Telugu. I am aware of translation in Hindi, translation in English. These books don't cost much. Now animals don't talk like that. Animals, you know, crows don't go and tell rabbits. That rabbit, rabbit, don't go that side. There is a lion waiting to eat you and rabbit remembers the crow. Okay, you crow, you saved my life. So when the crow was trapped, a pigeon was trapped, then somebody was required to free, rescue that crow and this rabbit came and rabbit with its sharp teeth was able to cut the net and crows flew away. It is true that crow can fly away. It is true that rabbits can cut, but rabbit and crow can never have conversation because neither rabbit has that kind of language nor crow has that kind of language. Neither do they know about each other and it is not that these stories have been written only in India, you know, or, you know, have you heard of this book, Alice in the Wonderland? Alice in the Wonderland, another very interesting English book. Please write. You must, you must read it when you find time. This is the book, you know, this book was written by a professor of mathematics. You know, he wrote in a pen name. His pen name is Lewis Carroll. This is not his real name. Please Google it and you will find his real name and other biographical information about him. He was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge and for a, you know, he didn't have his own family. He didn't marry, he didn't have children, but he had a, you know, one day he was visiting a friend and his friend had two or three daughters and they were celebrating the birthday of one of these girls and then the girl said, okay, uncle, uncle, where is my gift? And the uncle said, okay, I'll give you a gift. And then he wrote this book, Alice in the Wonderland. It's a very simple story. One day it so happens that Alice falls asleep. It's a story outdoors and in her sleep she finds that she has fallen down a pit, goes miles and miles into the earth in the pit, finally she lands at a place where animals are talking like human beings, where there is animal kingdom, okay? And this is a very interesting book, how, you know, fish and birds and lobsters and lizards and frogs and rabbits and snakes and butterflies and a whole lot of things talk to one another. You can watch it for yourself. The entire thing is there for free download on the net or you can just watch it there. But the point here is human beings can speak about things which have never happened, which cannot happen and this is what literature is made of, the entire stuff, the realm of imagination, the realm of fancy or fiction is different from fact and human beings have this capacity primarily because of language. Language enables them to go beyond experience. We and I may not have been to Wonderland but we can describe Wonderland. You and I may not have seen or may have forgotten but yet we can recall, imagine, you know, we can do a whole lot of things but we can recreate a world. We can always say, you know, a clever, smart, strange kind of things about anything. I am sure you recognize this building. What is it? It is the Taj Mahal. The mausoleum or the tomb created on the grave of Mumtaz Mahal by her husband, Shah Jahan. Later Shah Jahan himself was buried here, the middle of the 17th century. Right? A great monument considered to be one of the wonders of architecture in the world, considered one of the seven wonders in architecture or man-made kind of wonders in the world but a poet can always describe it differently. Tagore called it a drop of tear. You know? On the forehead or cheek of time, a drop of water, you know, the kind of thing which has stayed. Poets can always, you know, poets can always say fancy, strange things. Human beings, human languages have the capacity to go beyond here and now. Another, you know, just as you, I gave you a view of the book called Alice in the Wonderland. Similarly, there is this book called Time Machine by H. G. Wells. Okay? It says that transported into a, you know, it's a piece of fiction which says that a man once got into a machine and the machine transported him 2,500 years back. It was Time Machine. You could just as in a car, you can decide to go rear or you can decide to go forward. Okay? So this passenger decided to go backward in time and he went 2,500 years ago and had wonderful experience. This experience is narrated in this book called Time Machine, what the world was for them. We know, all of us know, that physically it's not possible. We cannot go back, let alone 2,500 years ago. We cannot get back into yesterday. We cannot rewind and bring this morning back. Every moment of time gone is gone forever. It cannot be recaptured. It cannot be relived. But human beings have that capacity of going beyond time, going beyond place. So you know, we can go beyond now. We can go beyond here. As you saw in the clipping I showed you from Lewis Carroll. Alice in the Wonderland. Okay? Language has the capacity, please write off. Language can be or language can help or can help achieve displacement. It can help us, it can help us go beyond here and now. In animal languages that's not possible. You cannot, as far as we know today a dog cannot tell another dog about what happened 500 years ago or five years ago or five days ago or what is going to happen. They have some kind of a sense which tells them about the oncoming storm or weather but they cannot speak about that. They don't have the language. They have the sense of fear. They have intuition. They have instinct. They can, you know, they can anticipate now a storm is about to come. Now there is threat to my life or this place is wonderful. I can stay and relax here but they cannot talk about all of these things because they do not have the property of displacement. They do not have tense, present or past. They do not have will, shall, can, go, went, verb in two different forms. Past, present, talk about future time, talk about past time. Human beings can. Other animals cannot. That is because human beings, natural languages have the capacity to achieve displacement. We can go beyond here and now. All languages are systematic. There is some amount of arbitrariness. Please write. But language is systematic. What do we mean when we say language is systematic? We mean two things. Number one, it has units. It is not one block. It is made up of sub-blocks. So languages as we saw earlier are made up of the largest unit is discourse, a paragraph, a lecture, a book. But then there are sentences. What is smaller than a sentence? Clauses. What is smaller than a clause? Phrases. What is smaller than a phrase? Words. What is smaller than a word? Cellables. What is smaller than a syllable? Sounds. What are smaller than sounds? Individual features, components of sounds. So each of these two, you know, you can take away. It is like, you know, any physical object, it has, you know, atoms. You further explore it and you find other particles. Finally you come to nanoparticles. Or maybe you can go even beyond. But there are rules following which they are put together. One syllable comes with another syllable, following a particular rule. Words do not go with one another without rules. Can you say snake run or run snake? Can you say sea snake or snake sea? Can you say eat water or drink water? What can you say? Drink water. But in Bengali you can say eat water. In English you can say eat rice, drink water, smell air. But in Hindi you can say eat rice, drink water, drink air. In Bengali you can say eat rice, eat water, eat air, eat cigarette. Bengalis don't smoke. They say cigarette khachchi, jawl khachchi, hava khachchi, bhat khachchi. Okay? You know, this is idiosyncratic. So, you know, there are rules using which you decide which word will go with which word. If you speak Hindi then you will have to bring gender into verb and adjectives. A boy goes and a girl goes. In English it is the same goes. But in Hindi you have different rules. There are rules using which you combine words. There are restrictions on combinations as well. It is not that anything can happen anywhere. Boys hostel is not the same thing as hostel boys. Do you understand? Okay? There are differences. Even sounds, you know. There are English words which begin with P-L-K-L, G-L. But they don't end with P-L-K-L, G-L. Okay? You don't have words, you know? I mean, in a certain sense. Okay? I'm talking at the moment of writing and speaking. Everything put together. But there are restrictions on occurrence. No word in English can begin with N-K. But they can end in N-K. You can have thank, but can you have in English a word that begins with N-K? You cannot. So languages are systematic. They are arbitrary only in association between meaning and word. Meaning and sound. Meaning and structure. But the way they are put together, there are lots of rules. Okay? And rules at different levels. Multi-tier rules. We learn those rules automatically without instruction. And that is why human beings are cleverer than computers. Okay? Because language is systematic. We learn those systems. Meaning in language depends on combination. Because it is systematic. You see, you have the same sound in kill and lick. K-I-L-L-I-K. But if you change the order, then meaning changes. Look at this sentence. One, two, three, four, five. What do you think is the meaning? A woman without her man is nothing. It can have two meanings. How you combine. You can say a woman without her man is nothing. Okay? Or you can say a woman without her man, many husbands believe that. Okay? A woman without her man is nothing. Okay? So, you know, meaning depends, it will be totally different. Depending upon how you combine words. And all this is possible. You know, you have the same words. Black boot and boot black. Black boot means a boot which is black in color. But boot black is a boy who polishes your boot. Right? Hope in the soul. They have the same words. But it is different from soap in the whole. It will be in bathroom. Okay? So, there are, you know, the meaning, because of the systematic nature of language, meaning is a property of combination. Or permutation and combination. You can bring one word here, another word there. In other words, unlike animal languages, human languages are not, please write, human languages are not holo-frastic. That entire phrase meaning one thing. No. There are units. They are made up of units. In dog's language, wow-wow together means one thing. Run away, another dog is coming. Okay? But in, that is not the case with us. Each sentence is made up of sounds. Sounds are put together in different combinations in different permutations. And meaning depends upon. Actually, it also influences your social judgment. If you hear about somebody who is dishonest but efficient, it is one thing. But if somebody says efficient but dishonest, it is another thing. What comes first? What comes next? What kind of impression is left? All of these things make a total impact. So language is not an arbitrary structure. It may be arbitrary in meaning, but a structure is pretty systematic. There are rules. There are constraints on combinations. And it is these rules and constraints that make language mean what it means. In other words, human beings are using a very complex mechanism called natural languages which are, you know, even if you leave everything else, the most important feature, the feature of being systematic is there. It is highly complex, sophisticated, rule-based stuff. No one knows how we learn those rules. We only know that language cannot be used without those rules. And we learn those rules almost without instruction, almost automatically. Do you have any questions? Thank you. Have a good day.