How do we understand the phrase flying pig? This sounds like a silly question (and later on I will show that it is) but people can get quite emotional about it. In a recent blog
post, for example, Greg Hickok took Ben Bergen to task for things Ben said about a flying pig in an interview on NPR.
Flying pig you ask? Yes, it was a comment that Ben made
about a flying pig that set Greg off in what someone on Twitter called an “epic
rant.” An epic rant about a flying pig: what could be better than that? (In
truth the rant was about more than just the pig but I hope you forgive my
fascination with the pig.)
What did Ben say about the pig? Here is the transcript of his interview. Ben first sets the NPR
listeners’ minds at ease: a flying pig
isn't something that actually exists in the real world. I like the no-nonsense approach here, but then Ben immediately veers into the danger zone: Yet when we read those words we see one in
our mind's eye. Most people see a pig with wings above its shoulders… But some
people imagine a pig with a cape, flying like Superman.
Uh-oh, epic rant alert! Ben should not have said this
because now Greg is all over it: Or maybe
I combine pig with my experience flying on 737s and imagine a pig sitting in
coach ordering a Diet Coke. Or should I combine pig with my baseball
experiences and picture a mini pig being used as a baseball and getting smacked
out to center field. Hold it right there, sir! To have a pig drink
Diet Coke is one thing but to miniaturize it and then smack it out to center
field, well that’s just cruel.
What does all of this have to do with language? Thought
you’d never ask. Ben argues in the interview that we understand the phrase flying pig by performing mental
simulations based on our previous experiences: a flying pig has meaning to us because our brain is using things we
have seen — pigs and birds — to create something we've never seen. This
is one way to think about it but you really don’t have to think of it in terms
of visual representations, abstract symbols will do just fine.
Traditional cognitive theories assume that we have networks
of nodes that represent concepts and their connections. Those connections
specify the relation between the concepts. For example, BIRD might have CAN FLY and HAS WINGS as
features. AIRPLANE would have the same features (obviously, because airplanes
are not identical to birds they have different features as well, such as HAS
LEGS and HAS WHEELS). PIG does not have these features but when it becomes
associated with FLYING, HAS WINGS might become temporarily activated and
associated with PIG. In this case, there is no mental simulation that involves
the visual system but we would still end up with a winged pig.
As Ben and Greg have just shown us, there are other ways to
think of a flying pig. Ben argues that these can also be represented via mental
simulation. That’s possible but they can also be represented by the
amodal-abstract-arbitrary symbol system that I just described (or a variant of
it). So Ben and Greg are both wrong. Ben is wrong to imply that mental
simulation is the only way in which multiple interpretations of FLYING PIG can
be generated and Greg is wrong to view the unrestrained generation of
flying-pig interpretations as a unique weakness of mental simulation, because the same
criticism can be leveled at traditional models of semantic representation.
Ben and Greg both ignore an important issue. Without sufficient
context, any phrase is open to multiple interpretations. We really cannot say
much about the interpretation of flying pig in isolation. Suppose someone came
up to you at a party and said: I saw a
flying pig. I highly doubt that you would generate all the interpretations
that Ben and Greg came up with. Your response would probably be more like Wow, someone must have spiked your drink,
bro or, if you’re more polite, Enjoy
the rest of the party, after which you would hurry to a far corner of the
room pretending to have spotted an old friend.
Context serves to restrict the number of potential interpretations.
Only (psycho)linguists and philosophers study language snippets in isolation. This
has led to fruitless, decades-long debates about the interpretation of
sentences no sane individual would ever utter, like The horse raced past the barn fell or The present king of France is bald.
So let’s create a context. Suppose there is a guy named Greg
who lives in Macon, Georgia. Greg’s brother Duane is a huge Game of Thrones fan. Huge fan. So huge
in fact that he has become interested in medieval warfare and has built his own
trebuchet. Unfortunately for Duane though, there are no boulders on his
property to hurl at targets. Resourceful guy that he is, Duane quickly realizes the
solution is living right next door. His neighbor, Dickey, is a pig farmer. He
buys all of Dickey’s pigs and each night (non-miniaturized) squealing pigs (talk
about live ammo) are being launched at targets. One day Duane’s wife, Jessica,
says to Greg: I’m gettin’ sick of them
flyin’ pigs.
Small chance Greg will interpret this (either though mental
simulation or through amodal symbol manipulation) to refer to a pig with a cape
or a pig ordering Diet Coke on a plane.
Making the relatively uncontroversial assumption that in
most contexts flying primes wings, we can predict that this priming effect
is erased by the context of the story. In fact, there is a study showing exactly
this. In most contexts, peanut and salted are associated, meaning that peanut primes salted. But let’s uppose that we have a story in which the
peanut is a protagonist who feels emotions, such as happiness and sadness.
Normally peanut would not prime sadness but in the context of the story, it should and it should not prime
salted. This is exactly what Mante
Nieuwland and Jos van Berkum found in their cool
study.
So Ben and Greg are both wrong. The promiscuity of
interpretations of flying pig is not
a pro (Ben) or a con (Greg) of simulation theory. It is a problem that occurs
when we take language out of context and study “textoids.”
In closing, here is an appropriately titled song by Pink Floyd. It
sounds a little tinny but the guitar solo is great.