 Good morning. Good morning sir. No, this side, they are still sleeping. Good morning. Good morning sir. Welcome to this last session of the course. In the last 40, 41 hours we have seen that language has a structure, language is systematic and we have made a lot of claims about different aspects of language. I hope you have learnt something. That is a big thing to hope. At least it has triggered some questions in your head. At least it has made you curious. At least next time you use the language or somebody else uses with you you know how to distinguish between good and bad language, quote unquote good, quote unquote bad. There are no hard and fast definitions. What are the things we do not know? There are lots compared with what we know. The area of ignorance, the things we do not know are very, very large. We do not know a lot of things and even what we know is based on idealized data. Today I am going to tell you about one or two, not too many of the important questions in language, in linguistics that remain unresolved, unsolved and maybe you know someday people from sciences, people from engineering can address themselves to these questions and try and find answers. But it is always good to know what we do not know and why we do not know. So this last session is about some of those questions which loom large over the field and have remained unanswered. Let us go. What is it we know about language? We know that it is systematic, but is it absolutely 100 percent systematic? Can we mathematically can we write an algorithm and can a machine generate language? Is it systematic to that extent and the answer is no, it is not. There are areas of arbitrariness, there are exceptions to rules, sometimes the rules themselves appear to be arbitrary, but it is generally agreed that like any other aspect of nature as in biology, as in geology, as in geophysics, as in botany language also has a system, has a structure. It is made up of lots, lots of small units put together in larger unit and larger unit put together in still larger unit and that is how we use them. In other words, order and order of units are important to language. That is one thing we know for certain that order and order of units at each level of a structure of language there is unit. There are levels like speech sounds, there are levels like phrases Rajesh talked to you about. There are different levels and different kinds of units. We know that order of units is important. Look at this example. I have put three sentences. It is a discourse. John is mortal. All men die. John is a man. Is it a good order? Or the other? All men die. John is a man. So, John is mortal. Which order is better? A or B? B of course. It is logically structured. Lots of other examples. Look at example, sentence number two. I saw the bike rider jump through the window. Is it a good sentence? Can a bike rider jump through the window? What is the speaker trying to say? Look at the sentence carefully. He was watching through a window and he saw a window. He was watching through the window. Yes, he looked through the window but through the window the prepositional phrase should have appeared soon after saw not after bike rider jump. You see, the place is important. It is like a button in your shirt. It must be in the right hole. It is not that button should go into any hole. It must go to the appropriate hole. This is important to meaning. Look at the next sentence. Three, after some rest from 2 to 5 p.m., the doctor will work. When will the doctor take rest? Before 2 or after 2? Before 2. Then the sentence should have been rewritten. How should the sentence be rewritten? How should the sentence be rewritten? From 2 to 5 p.m., obviously that is what he wants to say. Not that he will rest from 2 to 5 p.m., God bless him. Then he will do some work. So, you know order is important in language, in any language. Order is important. Look at the final sentence. It can mean more than one thing depending upon how you interpret it. What order you take? What are the interpretations you get? Fourth sentence. How would you like to read it? The fourth sentence please. A woman without her man is nothing. Yes. These are two very easy interpretations. A woman without her man is nothing. How many men believe that? Well, you should believe that. The other interpretation is also possible. The other interpretation is also possible. A woman without her man, without her husband without her ex or wife without her friend is nothing. Order, the way you relate one with another, the way you put two phrases together, two words together, two sounds together is this way is important to the structure of language. We know that. But can we predict meaning from rules of syntax, from rules of phonology, morphology, phonetics, discourse? Can we? Difficulty, you know. Many people say semantics, that is the study of meaning is the least understood branch of linguistics. Look at the following conversation. The mouse says, you know, this comes from the book Alice in the Wonderland. If you have not read this book, then this vacation you should. One of the greatest books written by mankind in any language. It was written by a professor of mathematics for the birthday of the daughter of one of his friends. It simply tells you that nothing is impossible, great literature. So there is a conversation between the mouse, door mouse and the little girl Alice. Alice asks the mouse, how are you? And the mouse says, mine is a long and sad tale. Said the mouse. And Alice says, long I understand. But why sad? Why does, why did Alice ask this question? Yeah, she mistook T-A-L-E for T-A-I-L. So meaning, meaning is not just the product of rules and dictionary, units and rules. Meaning as we know so far is product of much more than that. If it were so mechanical, then machines could translate from Telugu to Kannada, at least from Telugu to Hindi, at least if not from Telugu to English. Because Hindi and Telugu have nearly 80 percent of those same words. They have the same word order. They have the same sounds. There is hardly any difference. And yet machines can let alone translate from Hindi to English. They cannot even recognize all words from Hindi, all words from Telugu correctly. They cannot separate words in a running speech. The best results are close to 70, 72 percent, fewer than 80 percent, which human beings recognize easily. So meaning is more than that. This is machine translation. America bombs at random. And how does machine translate it? You can read phonetic transcription. Those of you who know Hindi, is it a correct translation? What should be the correct translation? America ne jaha taha bombara. Bina ye dekhye wikis kumara. Hospital kumara. Hotel kumara. Jaki fozikko foz kumara na chahiye. Bombs at random is without target. But you know at random here has been translated as a place. As if random were a place and America is bombing, random. How would you translate that in Telugu? Just the Hindi translation of this thing. America ne random pe bombara. America loo. This is incorrect. Why is it incorrect? Because translation comprehension, you know, a translation can be differently understood. Linguistic theory, whatever we know today is based on idealized data. We take sounds in isolation. We describe phonetics. We take words in isolation and we write phonology. We take sentences in isolation and we write syntax. Actually, corrected speech. Speech in context. When you start a sentence one way, finish it another. When you use one word and mean another, when you say, oh, so he is a nice man. You know what you mean is he is anything but a nice man. You know there is sarcasm. There is satire. There is meaning in the context. So, linguistic theory is based on idealized data. But in a speech distortion happens. Sounds may not be pronounced correctly. Words may not be pronounced correctly. This weekend I was at the airport examining air traffic controllers. They are English. You know, they have to certify in order to continue working. And a lot of simple phrases, you know, they have to say go ahead and they say go ahead. It can be misunderstood. Do you mean H E A D, which will mean one end of the tarmac runway? Or do you mean go ahead, keep going? What do you mean? Do you mean 19 or do you mean 90 when you do not pronounce it clearly? Thank God, human beings know more than rules of language. They know the context. The pilot knows that there is no runway called 90. There is only runway called 19. So, what the air traffic controller means is 19. Human beings can understand in spite of distortions. Look at the SMS on the left hand. What is it trying to say? Very simple. Can you understand on the right hand? What is the trick? You know, why you know, there are lot more than how about you? He is saying, it is a he. He is saying, I am expecting lot of guests this time. Only vowels do not convey anything, but only consonants still do in the written form. Why we do not know? We do not have enough knowledge. We do not have enough answer. The point here is, you know, if those of you who are from computer science go and ask your teacher or maybe you can take it for future research, there are fault tolerant systems. You make one or two mistakes and you still get correct email ID. Similarly, you know, your mind knows a lot more than so far has been possible to capture in rules. And it is through those clues that meaning is made out. In other words, how do we understand? Content words, structure words, they all help each other. If a structure word is not there, we can still make out through content words. Content words are, you know, home, bread, come, go, walk, live, teacher, professor. These are content words. They are meaning. A structure words is am, to, from. Do we all learn all of them together? Are they equally important? How much space they take? What are the rules that connect one another? We do not know. We do not have. Sometimes language and culture, language is also influenced by culture. If you go to places like Antarctica or, you know, Arctic regions, not Antarctica, Arctic regions, you know, I have read in literature, I have not personal experience, that schemas have many words for ice. They have about 14 words for ice. In my mother tongue, we have only one word for ice. That is also there for snow. What is the situation in your mother tongue? How many words do you have for ice and snow? Those who know Hindi, how many words for ice and snow? Only one, barf, ice be barf, snow be barf. Those who know Tamil, how many words for ice and snow? Barf, ice be barf, but we have lots of different words for rains. Lots of different words for the sun. Sun in morning is one thing. Sun in the afternoon or midday, you know, we call him, marthand, Bhaskar, you know, burning. We have, through the year, we have all kinds of words for rains. Can you give me five words for rains from Telugu? Ten degrees of, give me words for drizzle, give me words for drizzle, give me words for downpour, all of those words. You know, English, English has it, we have much more than, many more than that. Yeah, right. Now, the point is, the question for us, the question for us in science is, why is it some people have, why is it some people have more words for the same thing? Do they see more than we do? Or, is it that in our place, it is limited in their place, it is more? Do you see the point? It is the same sun, same run, same snow, same sand. For some people, for sand in my mother tongue, we have only one word. But for different kinds of clay, I come from agricultural country. There are, at least I can tell you nine words for different kinds of clay. Black soil, white soil, paddy soil, corn soil, useless soil. We have a phrase, all useless boys are compared with that soil. It is good for nothing. So, are the, you know, language and culture, are they related? Do they influence one another? We do not know. There are other questions. You hardly come across anyone who has failed his mother tongue. He has learned to speak, to listen and understand. But we frequently come across people who could not learn French or English as a second language, as a, another language. Why, you know, if all human beings are biologically programmed to learn language, then why do not we learn all languages equally well? And why do some people, some people speak English like they, it was their mother tongue. Actually, their Telugu is bad. They speak Telugu like they were speaking English. They do not say Bagunarada. They say, Bagunarada. We have to tell them, please, you are in Sikandaravad, not in Sydney. Why is it? We do not know. In other words, meaning is more than the sum of words in an order, knowledge of word, knowledge of words, knowledge of order, knowledge of structures. It is a whole lot of things. Meaning is not just word and rules. Meaning is also language, culture, knowledge of world, lot of things put together. What does it mean? Does it mean we need not try? We can never know? No, we can know. But this is the way. Go this way, you know. Try and understand the words. Try and understand the units. Try and understand the structural related rules. And this will lead you to understand language and society. And maybe someday you are able to design a machine, write a book of grammar which can answer all of these questions. After all, whatever we know, we know because we have tried. I think I will stop here. If you have any questions, you can please ask me.