June 15, 2005
The Embedding by Ian Watson
A true classic, published in the 1970s, the writing is still fresh and the plot has not dated at all. This is a remarkable first novel in the long and distinguished career of Ian Watson.
This is one of a handful of sf novels that bases its speculations on the scientific study of human language, and it well might be the best of the bunch. Ian Watson takes the assumption that the internal structures of human languages reflects the human ability to observe and explain the physical universe while at the same time he is sensitive to the notion of an specific computational mechanism in the brain that guides first language acquisition. The "Embedding" of the title is a reference to a particular aspect of this computational mechanism.
The protagonist of "The Embedding", Chris Sole, works in a British linguistics research facility where they conduct experiments (which would be illegal in a contemporary setting) on young children, altering their reality by isolating them in strange environments and altering their brains with drugs, evaluating the change in the linguistic structures they produce. Another thread of this novel follows the French anthropologist Pierre Darriand who lives with a tribe deep in the Amazonian forest called the Xemahoa, who distort their reality with ritual drug-taking and who produce, in a way similar to the children in the lab, highly embedded linguistic structures. There is a third thread about aliens who arrive on Earth hoping to trade some of their advanced knowledge for the knowledge collected by Earth linguists: a great premise although somewhat less compelling in execution.
The "Embedding" is a property of recursive rule systems used by linguists to describe certain aspects of natural language. Take, for example, the following noun phrase:
the shares that the broker recommended which were bought
Let's denote the noun phrase the broker by the abstract symbol N1 and the associated verb phrase for it recommended gets the symbol V1. Similarly, the shares is called N2 and were bought is called V2:
N2 N1 V1 V2
We assume that we have to keep track of N2 (that is, we cannot discard it) until we see the verb associated with it, V2. This is called an embedding of size 2.
Convince yourself that in the following example, the embedding is of size 2 and not 3:
the mutual fund that had a 4-year term and the shares that the broker recommended which were bought
N3 V3 N2 N1 V1 V2
So can we make the embedding more complex? Here is another example where the embedding is of size 3:
the mutual fund containing the shares that the broker recommended which were bought that had a 4-year term
N3 N2 N1 V1 V2 V3
Can you construct or imagine accepting an example (in the language of your choice) with embedding of 4? How about 5? It is clear that humans have a definite limit on the number of center embeddings they can accept or produce. Ian Watson imagines a method that can modify brain structures to accept embeddings of increasing sizes that normal humans cannot process. Why is this interesting? Computationally a deeper embedding has implications for how certain kinds of recursive patterns can be processed, although going from there to the transcendence of human linguistic ability, including the perception of multiple spatial dimensions, is quite a stretch, and this is what Ian Watson speculates about in this novel.
The use of the Xemahoa's awareness of time is probably an allusion to the famous linguistic/anthropological "discoveries" about the tense system of Hopi. Another possible insider joke is the abduction of an Eskimo Innuit speaker as part of the plot towards the end of the novel (see "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" by Geoffrey Pullum).
Unlike previous attempts in science-fiction to deal with the connections between language, thought and perception (see, for example, "The Languages of Pao" by Jack Vance), Ian Watson plays with the various linguistic hypotheses on this topic in his fictional framework by introducing artificial means for changing the brain itself while simultaneously changing the reality experienced by a language learner.
However, the the overwhelming cynicism that pervades the book can get oppressive. This does not detract from the book and perhaps it is function of the time when this book was written. The constant berating of the Americans is one-sided and repetitive, imho. The new face of English Socialism in science-fiction, e.g. the output of authors like Ken MacLeod seem much gentler in comparison.
For a different take on this novel, read Pamela Sargent's Introduction to "The Embedding". Some other examples of linguistic speculations in sf novels are: "Native Tongue" by Suzette Haden Elgin' "The Languages of Pao" by Jack Vance and a critical survey of such sf novels in "Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction" by Walter M. Meyers.
Update : Mark Liberman has instituted the Trent Reznor Prize for Tricky Embedding, thanks to the following quote by Reznor from an interview:
"When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I'd love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie."
Here is a brief unraveling/analysis of the Reznor embedding:
When I look at people (with some characteristics) it would be Bowie (who fits those characteristics)
>> [NP people [RC1 that I feel have been a [NP mentor NP] or [NP archetype of [NP what I would love to see my career mentioned as a footnote for (archetype) or in the same paragraph as (archetype) NP] NP] RC1] NP] <<
NP = noun phrase RCn = relative clause of embedding n
A1 = the argument of mentioned
%T The Embedding %A Ian Watson %I New York: Carroll and Graf Publishing Inc. %D 1973 %G ISBN: 088184554X (pb) %P 217 %K science-fictionPosted by anoop at June 15, 2005 02:31 PM