Linguistic Knowledge Through Experience

Well, looks like I made it: two posts in one week. This one has a considerably different tone (and subject matter) than Tuesday's, so you even get some variety.

Some random thoughts about linguistics and the philosophy of language:

Most "well-educated" people are familiar with the two primary categories of nouns. There are the "concrete" nouns, which represent objects with which we can physically interact in some way; examples include cloud, wood, fire, electricity, and car. Then there are the "abstract" nouns, which represent intangible "ideas;" examples include justice, love, strength, and futility. So this system essentially categorizes nouns based on whether they are material or ethereal.

I was thinking about a different way to categorize nouns. In fact, it could be used to describe all kinds of words, but it seems most applicable to nouns. This system probably exists somewhere already, but I don't recall seeing it. So, to help me think through it (and to give you something to read), I shall present it here.

This "new" system categorizes words based on how they are defined. Can the concept expressed by the word be explained solely with language, or must it be experienced? The former I shall call "explainable" words, and the latter I shall call "experience" words.

An example of a explainable word could be book. A book can be described (both quantitatively and qualitatively): "a book is a collection of sheets of paper, bound together along one common edge, with words printed on the pages, which is created so that people may read the words for information, enjoyment, or communication." Another example would be mercy: "mercy is compassionate treatment; it involves treating others well in spite of having them in one's power." Some of the words in these definitions might require further explanation ("paper," "compassion"), but the ideas can be expressed and understood purely through speech.

Now consider the word red. Can you define red using only language? You could take the route of the physicist, and say that red is light of a certain wavelength (between 630 and 750 nanometers, I believe) (or you could say that an object that reflects only this wavelength of light is red), but that doesn't tell you much about the color of these words. Another possible route is to say that red is the color of blood and hot metal, but that doesn't really work, either. People who have been blind all their lives can never truly know what red is. Sweet is another "experience" word. To someone who has no sense of taste, saying "Sweet is the tase of sugar" is meaningless. And a person with no sense of touch cannot really understand what hot, cold, soft, and coarse mean, and is likely to be confused about the concept of texture. These "experience" words cannot truly be understood in the absence of personal experience with the ideas they represent.

To give further examples: If you defined beauty as "a visual image which is pleasing to look at," a blind person could probably understand the concept, even if quem couldn't actually visualize something pleasant. On the other hand, the word pleasure itself is very difficult to define accurately without (for example) feeding someone a bar of chocolate and saying, "What you are feeling as a result of eating this chocolate is 'pleasure'."

The common thread that runs through the "experience" words seems to be their inherently sensuous natures. In general, the more closely a concept is related to the senses, the harder it is to define without providing an actual experience of that concept.

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with anything, but perhaps at some point down the line some linguist/logician/computer programmer will find this kind of idea useful in developing Artificial Intelligence. Or maybe I'm completely off my rocker and don't know what I'm talking about. That's always a possibility. :-p

Discuss?