Spoiler index: ★★★☆☆ There is no spoiler in the first part, there will be a spoiler warning later
At the beginning of the movie "Arrival", the heroine played by Amy Adams tells a story to the military: Captain Cook arrived in Australia in the 18th century and asked the aboriginals what the animal was that was jumping around everywhere. , The answer is "Kangru", so the word kangaroo in English comes from this. But Cook didn't know that the word was actually "what did you say" in the native language.
After the military left, the hero said, a good story.
"It's fake, but it's effective." The heroine who is a linguist turned her head and smiled.
"Arrival" is based on "The Story of Your Life" by Chinese sci-fi writer Jiang Fengnan. It is undoubtedly the most anticipated sci-fi movie last year, but the domestic schedule has been delayed, and it was released in late January this year. As a film discussing the first contact with aliens, it rarely takes the process of learning to communicate as the core. In other sci-fi movies, the process of deciphering alien languages is either done in the same area, using super-technologies that are not explained, or simply letting aliens bring their own English skills. In "Arrival", it became the number one question: How do you learn to understand a completely unfamiliar language?
This problem is not the first time that mankind has encountered this problem.
Kangaroo's story: How do you know what the other person is referring to when you first meet?
The story told by the hostess, Dr. Banks, is a widely circulated urban legend; but the word kangaroo really comes from the name gangurru in the ancient Emidhill language of Australia, which has been later Confirmed by the linguists. On July 12, 1770, the naturalists under Captain Cook wrote this word for the first time in the diary, using the spelling kanguru. Coincidentally, the naturalist was also surnamed Banks.
So, if you are Banks and you see that big thing jumping around for the first time, how do you know whether the aboriginals are talking about the name of this creature, or are you asking "what did you say?" The famous analytical philosopher Quine called this problem referential uncertainty (yes philosophers love this unclear name). If an aboriginal sees a kangaroo and says "Kangru" to you, what is he talking about? "Look, Kangaroo"? "Hey, the food is coming"? "Go, go hunting"? "(This thing is jumping, explaining) It's going to rain today"? "Yo, a kangaroo tail"?
This problem is actually not that difficult to solve. Just point to a tree on the side and ask again. If the other person gives a completely different answer, then it is basically certain that he is not asking "what did you say". And if you point to another kangaroo and ask, "Is this Kangruo too?", you will be able to confirm with a high probability whether the other kangaroo is talking about hunting, and so on. But the premise is of course to communicate. At this point, Dr. Banks’ protest to the military is completely correct-it is of course impossible to decipher a completely unknown language by relying on audio that is out of context; you must communicate with the other party in order to eliminate the referral as much as possible. Uncertainty.
In fact, most of the first contacts in history do not even need this-because it is easy to find an intermediary; and even if there is no intermediary, the two parties do not need to rely on the deciphering of a linguist, and they can communicate and communicate quickly. Build a rough mixed language. The famous "Pidgin English" is a mixture of English and Shanghainese. Of course, such language is usually produced in trade and will not be used to express complex meanings, causing misunderstandings and not having any serious consequences (like in movies).
And if there is enough time for the two sides to contact for many years, and the newborn children grow up in such a linguistic environment, these children can truly master the two languages at the same time, and they can even handle the rough, poor vocabulary, The grammatically incomplete mixed language is transformed into a real language by virtue of language instinct. Singaporean English is the product of such a transformation: Although it is indeed based on English, its vocabulary and grammar have been greatly influenced by Chinese and Malay, making it enough to become a stable and independent new Language. As for languages such as Japanese, which are a mixture of Altaic and Austronesian languages, they have undergone so long changes that no one except linguists will find any traces of its fusion at all.
Unfortunately, there is no such luxury in the "Arrival" movie. The trailer shows how the arrival of aliens has exacerbated conflicts in different countries, so the heroine only has a short time to decipher. But the impact of learning alien languages far exceeded everyone's expectations.
(From here, we are about to enter the spoiler link.)
Does learning a language really learn a kind of thinking?
The core plot of the movie is (the last spoiler warning) : Aliens who visit Earth can actually see the future, and this superpower comes from their language. In the process of learning this language, Dr. Banks has gradually mastered this ability to see the future-and the flashing images of her daughter throughout the film are not her memories, but all she uses this ability. A fragment of the future seen.
Language determines thinking, and learning language will also change thinking, which is predicted by the term "Sapir-Wolf Hypothesis" mentioned in the movie. This hypothesis caused a complete bloodbath in the linguistics field of the 20th century, and even directly affected the literature and intellectual circles-George Orwell’s "New Words" designed in "1984" controlled the freedom of thought by controlling language , Is to follow this route.
The most well-known product of this controversy should be the statement that "there are more than a hundred words about snow in Eskimo." Wolf believes that different words are used in Eskimo, such as fallen snow, ground snow, compacted snow, and so on, and they also think that these snow are different things. However, subsequent research shows that Wolf misunderstood the results of previous anthropologists. There are indeed many words related to snow in Eskimo, but most of them are different variations of the same word. Some have meanings related to snow but do not directly refer to snow, and some are a word caused by dialects and neighboring languages. Of many forms. There are actually only three roots in the original Eskimo that really mean snow. The most important thing is that although there are various subdivisions and variants, the Eskimos did not ignore their similarities and lost their understanding of the overall concept of "snow"; just as professional painters would have different paintings There are many professional terms, but these paintings still belong to "painting" in their hearts.
Although this controversy has not really settled down, if you can barely generalize, the kind of strong determinism envisioned by Wolff cannot be established, and language will not make people's thinking change drastically. Weak influences seem to exist: for example, do you remember the ancient Emidhill language that coined the word "kangaroo" in English? In this language, only east, west, south and north are used to indicate directions, and front, back, left, and right are never used. If I watch a movie and recall the plot afterwards, it may say "the protagonist walks forward", but the ancients would say "he walks north" (if the movie screen is turned 180 degrees while watching, he will say "afterwards" Go south"). This kind of sensitivity to each other's position at all times requires them to keep mentioning the nouns when they are speaking, and it also allows them to not turn around no matter how they walk, and they can clearly distinguish east, west, south and north when they are indoors. Although this influence is quite different from Wolf's imagination, it is also a very interesting influence after all.
There is another embarrassment facing Wolff: he exaggerated the differences between different languages in his imagination. Quite a few linguists, represented by Chomsky, believe that human languages have very big commonalities, so even if language affects thinking, it is difficult to have an overwhelming effect. But "Arrival" is different, this is an alien language. It and the way of thinking it represents may indeed be very fundamentally different from human beings-so, what are the differences?
What the movie didn’t tell you: everything about seeing the future
In the original novel of "Arrival", Jiang Fengnan's "The Story of Your Life", a lot of pen and ink is used to discuss how aliens see the future. Correspondingly, the male protagonist who is a theoretical physicist also has a lot of roles. But probably because the screenwriter thinks this paragraph is too difficult, the movie version was swept past, only a subtle hint, that is, when other physicists said in the communication, we think the mathematics is very simple, but they think it is very complex.
But it’s okay, let’s try to talk about it instead of the movie here.
We all learned the law of reflection of light when we were in junior high school: the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of exit. Since it is a law, it seems impossible to talk about why-but this law has a characteristic: it takes the shortest of all possible routes for light to follow this path from the starting point to the mirror surface and then to the end.
Only this feature is nothing, it may be just a coincidence. But if you still remember the law of refraction of light in high school, you will be surprised to find that according to the route prescribed by the law of refraction, the time taken by light is actually the shortest of all possible routes. It can even be promoted outwards. No matter what strange route it takes, it will hold on to extreme situations; and from this rule (that is, the "Fermat Principle", um, it is the Fermat of Fermat's Last Theorem ), it is enough to derive the laws of optics that we know under normal circumstances. It seems that the normal laws of optics and Fermat's principle seem to be two completely different but equivalent ways of looking at the same thing.
There are only two ways. But the more you think about this Fermat's principle, the more you will feel that it is not right. It doesn't have much brains, how can it know which route is the shortest? And the light hasn't reached the destination at the moment of reflection, how does it know where the destination is and calculate the angle based on this? Moreover, why does light follow the shortest route?
Even more incredible is that this is not limited to light. If we throw a small ball into the air, the ball will accelerate according to Newton's law, which we are all familiar with. However, the movement of the small ball actually satisfies a "minimum", but this time it is not the minimum time, but the minimum "kinetic energy minus potential energy". Based on this principle, the entire Newtonian mechanics can be derived.
Don't talk about Newtonian mechanics. All the laws of physics today have another way of looking at things. The characteristics of this method are the same as Fermat's principle. It seems that the world has "know" what is going to happen, and has "examined" all possible routes to the goal, and finally "choose" the path with the least cost.
incredible.
Today's physicists will use the principle of wave-particle duality to explain. When the light is emitted, it looks like a photon is traveling in one direction, but it is also a kind of wave at the same time, spreading outward. They have indeed traveled all possible routes, but on those "wrong" routes, waves will interfere with each other to cancel out, leaving only the "correct" route. To be honest, this explanation is still difficult to understand, and still counter-intuitive, but at least it does not rely on any strange omniscience, foreseeing the future, or time travel.
But Jiang Fengnan chose a romantic explanation in his novels. In his setting, Fermat's Principle really represents a brand new worldview, and the alien named heptapod is standing on that side. For them, the "teleological" world view is natural. It is the normal way of thinking to know the goal first and then choose the way to the goal; on the contrary, the "causalist" world view of human beings takes one step at a time. Strange. Therefore, the laws of physics that humans find difficult, heptapods find it simple, and vice versa.
When the heroine learned their language, according to the romantic Sapir-Wolf hypothesis, she also mastered this way of seeing the future.
It's just that just as light follows the same route under both worldviews, so in the novel, people follow the same behavior under both worldviews. In other words, you can see the future, but you cannot change it.
I saw the story of your life
The final core conflict of the movie "Arrival" fell on international politics: alien spacecraft arrived in multiple countries at the same time, intensifying the suspicion between countries, requiring the heroine to use her newly acquired alien language to resolve. But the original novel "The Story of Your Life" does not have this clue. The point of it is personal experience: you have seen your future, you have seen your daughter, and you have seen her death. What are you going to do?
The answer is to do nothing. I can’t do it, but more importantly, I don’t want to do it.
Countless myths, novels and movies have touched on the theme of "foreseeing the future". You see the disaster in the future, of course you have to take action. In some works you succeeded, in some works, no matter what you do is useless, in some works it is your actions that caused the disaster, and in some works you finally return after all attempts have failed. Starting point, silently waiting for the destiny to come. All of this is human nature.
But the heroine in "The Story of Your Life", Louis Banks, who has learned the language of the heptapod and understood the way of thinking of the heptapod, no longer needs to abide by human nature.
So far, human beings are the only intelligent life we know. So it is extremely difficult to imagine how a kind of inhuman intelligence thinks. But Jiang Fengnan succeeded: he allowed readers to understand a teleological worldview, and also allowed readers to understand the choice of the heroine. In his depiction, starting from Fermat's principle, everything has been fixed. Changing one's choices and not reaching the end of what one sees is not only impossible, but also unimaginable, just as human beings in reality cannot predict the future. The way the universe avoids the time paradox is not to patch physics, but to patch people’s free will; when people can predict the future, her view of free will will change accordingly, so that she can only realize the future. There is no choice, nothing to ask for.
After the release of "Arrival", some original parties expressed disappointment with this adaptation. It is true that it is too difficult to explain Fermat's principle on the screen. There is no worldwide conflict and it is not in line with the usual conventions of Hollywood science fiction films. From the perspective of the original work, the story and techniques of this film are very complete and mature, beyond criticism; but for me, the focus of the original novel is not linguistics or physics, nor the Sapir-Wolf hypothesis. Not Fermat's principle. The novel begins with the death of my daughter, and ends with the birth of my daughter. As a reader, I watched Louis foreseeing all this with a heartbreak, but accepted all of it calmly; she saw the complete face of the world, in all of us. When immersed and struggling in it, she was the only one who jumped out and made a choice that no human would ever make——
That is not to change anything. After all, this is the story of your life.
Originally posted on Guokr.com http://www.guokr.com/article/441976/
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