Язык и мозг в меняющемся мире Татьяна Черниговская

One of the features of the modern academic discourse is the convergence of scientific knowledge. Philology, pedagogy and neuroscience also enrich each other. Talking about the scientific description of the language system, about the assimilation of its facts by the learners, scientists think about how the process of assimilation of the language is built, what mechanisms cause the speech antigenesis. The head of the Department of Convergences of Natural and Humanities Sciences, Director of the Institute of Cognitive Research of St. Petersburg State University, Professor, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Member of the Correspondent of the Russian Academy of Education Tatyana Vladimirovna Chernygovskaya. Good afternoon, dear colleagues. I am a linguist. I graduated from the Faculty of Philology of the University of St. Petersburg. Lyudmila Alekseevna Verbitskaya was my teacher from the first year. Then I went to other sciences, but the Almighty God brought me back. The field I am working in is called Cognitive Sciences. It is important to note that this year the field of Cognitive Sciences was officially recognized as a new field of science. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation has approved this. It is an interdisciplinary field where different people work. There are linguists, psychologists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, philosophers. I will talk not so much about the Russian language, but about the language in general. People are creatures that live in a world of different sign systems. Here on the first slide I showed the alphabet. There is a musical code. There is no one else on earth, except people, who does not have music. This is a separate question, what is it. And finally, we have mathematics. This, of course, is not the whole set of languages that a person deals with, but the main ones. So, we are, of course, Homo sapiens. We are Homo loquens, a speaking person. We are Homo legens, a person who reads and writes. And finally, we are Homo semioticus. Of course, because the further we look at what is done in the brain from the position of my science, the clearer it becomes that the brain is not just dealing with signals, but with meanings. And, of course, it is impossible to tell this in detail in this message, but believe me, the language is not only, and perhaps not even as much a means of communication as a means of thinking. It is an exquisite, very subtle and very complex tool with which we think. Therefore, returning to the subject of the Russian language, we must understand that if we describe complex topics, complex objects, if it is complex Russian literature or complex oral discourse, it all depends on what level we take. Let's say, in order to read the books of my colleague and friend, I hope, Evgeny Vodolaskin, you need to know Russian very well. This is complex literature. The human language is not arranged as communicative systems of other biological species. One of the disputes in our science is that a person differs from all our other neighbors on the planet. Quantitatively or qualitatively? Quantitatively means that we all have memory, we all have attention, we all have communication systems, we are all alive. Only those who have them are chemical, those who have them are mechanical, and those who have them are like us. Or is it a qualitative difference? Let's say, Darwin believed that the difference is quantitative, that everything is the same, only we have better, faster, more effective, and so on. This is a controversial question. Our language differs from all other communication systems used by living beings by the fact that it is arranged differently. It is a very complex system. The language is, as I write, a hierarchical structure. It is built of certain, in quotation marks, atoms. These atoms can be phonemes, but there are slogan languages. Then these are slogans. For example, it's like a Lego constructor. Some things are put in a box, and there are as many of them as there are. In this language, there are 17 of them, so there are not 18 of them, and not 16. Or 80, so not 81. That is, the set is stable, but this is all that is stable in the language. After that, these atoms, that is, you build whatever you want, they are put in slogans or morphemes, as we will call them, in words, words in phrases, phrases in texts. Language ability is a system, this is important, some basic, universal, possibly genetically fixed rules that exist for all languages of the Earth. This is what is important. These are some of the most important algorithms that everyone has, everyone has a human genome. Despite the fact that there are about 7,000 languages on our planet, I say about, because we are all specialists here, and we understand, depending on how to count, what to consider, say, a dialect, and what a separate language. But the order is like this, about 7,000 languages, and they are very different. In all of them, nevertheless, there are some basic rules, which I cannot describe now, but for obvious reasons. It seems that this is a innate thing, and it provides our speech activity. That is, I am speaking now, and you are listening. Our language, unlike the languages of our other neighbors on the planet, where there are closed lists, that is, a signal that indicates danger, or I want to eat, well, in general, it is different. Everyone has a certain dictionary, a dictionary in quotation marks, and it is finite. For a person, this is an open list. I continue what Nikolai Mikhailovich just said, new words appear all the time, and other words disappear. This is very variable. It depends on social status, on profession, and on thousands of other reasons. And the main feature of our language, of the human language, not only Russian, is productivity. That is, the ability to create messages that no one has spoken before. And moreover, the ability of everyone else to accept and even understand this message. This is a completely new thing. In our genome, a huge number of genes work on the brain. And this is an accumulation of millions of years of evolution. The question that interests everyone in our specialty is what are the genes that determine a person. Are there specific human genes? Well, as you understand, I can't give a lecture, or even give several lectures here, so I'm just throwing questions at you, that this is an important point. And can our ability to speak a language be determined by a separate gene, a language gene? There was such a trend a few years ago. This is exactly the trend, because it has already collapsed. The FOXP2 gene was discovered, that is, it was discovered earlier, but it was shown that the breakdown of this gene can lead to catastrophic language disorders. It affects families, there is dyslexia, there is an inability to learn a language in time or correctly. Different things. But, and I even write, there is another gene, FOXP1, which, if it is disrupted, then the memory is destroyed. This can lead, for example, to reading disorders. And if we have a bad understanding, we can make a stupid, absolutely wrong conclusion, that if the gene is broken and reading is disrupted, then it is a reading gene. I tell you that this is a wrong logic of reasoning. Such complex things as language or memory, different types of memory and attention are never provided by one gene. Therefore, if someone tells you this, or writes to you, I mean that he is either a crook or just doesn't know anything. In fact, this gene exists, and it provides the correct structure of the neural network in those parts of it that are responsible for the language. This is what is important. It is not engaged in grammar. Cells are not engaged in grammar. They do a completely different job. Therefore, such a correct structure of the neural network gives a person the opportunity to master any language of the Earth, as his native language, or any other languages, such as the second, third, and so on. We all have, without exception, the most complex neural network. Now it is supposed to be 86 billion neurons. But not so long ago, me and everyone else, we were talking about 100 billion neurons. Of course, it doesn't matter to me. First of all, let them not tell us how they counted them. I just want to know how 100 billion cells can be counted. But it doesn't matter. It is still about super-astronomical quantities. These are the words that are used. Each cell can have up to tens of thousands of connections with other places in the brain. And this leads us to a terrible number, namely, a quadrillion connections in the brain. It is impossible to even imagine. Therefore, all of us, smart, stupid, genius, all of us have such a device between our ears, which is more complex, out of everything we know about the Universe, there is nothing. Moreover, this is a dynamic network. It influences everything we come across. Everyone, you and me, we are now reconstructing a neural network. It is complex, but it is also unstable. It changes all the time. It is very difficult to study it. It is a picture that has nothing to consider. We know the places in the brain that are occupied with hands, legs, verbs, nouns, and other complex things. There are zones, I am making a slide in English, because this is how it should be in this case. There are zones that may even be present here, which are occupied with language. This is the marriage zone, which is responsible for what I am doing now, that is, my own speaking. And there is the faith zone, which works for you, because you perceive the language. This is a very complex story, and we don't have time to discuss it. There was such a wonderful, then underrated English scientist, John Hewlings Jackson, who was the first to pay attention to the role of the right hemisphere of the brain. He began to talk about the hemisphere of the brain. In 1981, he was awarded the Nobel Prize by Roger Sperry and his team. And in the same years, I also worked in this field, and my doctoral dissertation was on this topic. Only there the language is still present, of course. Roman Osch-Capson, to whom, among other things, something from Mayakovsky is dedicated, because they were friends. In 1980, he gave a lecture in New York on Brain and Language, which was later published in a separate book, and I translated it for the edition of the selected meetings. And there he describes the role of the right and left brain for the language. And this is a very smart, very small, but fundamental work. In the games with language and brain, a lot of domestic scientists, including the classics, such as Aleksandr Luriev, where he worked. Aleksandr Luriev was a psychologist, a linguist, a doctor, a genius. He is the founder of domestic neurolinguistics together with Roman Osch-Capson and, of course, Vygotsky. In St. Petersburg, there were also remarkable scientists, such as Natalia Nikolaevna Traugott, whose laboratory I was fortunate to work in when she was already very old and did not formally lead it. And those who work with language in children and with violations, of course, know this name. Of course, Bekhterev and his granddaughter Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva play a huge role in this story, because they were engaged in the brain in connection with the language. And again, alas, there is no time to talk about it. Academician Vyacheslav Ivanov was very passionate about this, and we worked together. And, of course, there is no time to talk about it. In the general view, there is a lot of information in the brain and in society, and this is the same. Therefore, the humanitarians had such an interest in this topic in those years, but in the general view, I put my hand to it, alas. Well, not alas, I repeat, the Nobel Prize was given for this, but now it is not as simple as it seemed then. It was believed that the left is mathematics, ration, and the right is poets, artists, gestalt, emotions, metaphors. Is it still so? No, it's not. If we take a vector, it is true that at one end of this vector there will be one, and at the other another. But when we look at what really happens, then the genius mathematicians, physicists, and not only lyricists, use gestalt, metaphors, intuition, and such things no less, if not more, than poets. Einstein wrote, imagination is stronger than knowledge, because knowledge is limited from one to another, and imagination is a free cat, it goes wherever it wants. And he wrote, instinct is a gift from heaven, and mind is a humble servant, precisely in this sequence. I hope no one will accuse me but pride must be hidden. Mind can't do everything. Discoveries are not made with the help of a logarithmic line, even if this logarithmic line is a tomograph, or a synchrophysotron. Discoveries are made by people. Here is a discovery. From the fact that devices are needed. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and I keep thinking all the time. What do we want to find there? I am also a chief scientific officer of the Institute of the Human Brain. I work with tomographs, functional magnetic resonance, positron emission tomographs, encephalographies of various types. When we say, let us have very expensive equipment, what's next? We have expensive equipment. If you ask the wrong question, there is nothing to spend money on. Why do we need a philosopher? Why in our history, when I described this multidisciplinary field, there is absolutely no philosopher. A philosopher, in a good case, is a person who is trained to think well. He must be able to ask the right question and assess the correct answer. There is no logical failure there. Do you understand? That's why we need a philosopher. What are we looking for? Objects? Spoons, spoons, books, clickers? It's a pity if we are looking for them, because there are no such places. We are looking for mechanisms, that is, how it works. We are looking for algorithms, but the brain does not work only algorithmically. Most likely, we will find, but this is the subject of another lecture. Maybe we are looking for principles? How does it work in general? Not small things, but in general. Yes, we are looking for principles, but how to find them? I have a few more minutes. I also talk for a long time. Nikolai Mikhailovich is well known. It's not the first century, but the brain works like a very complex computer. If we stop people on the street and ask what the brain does, 100 out of 100 will answer. It receives information from the outside world, that is, through the doors and windows going to the brain, through sensory systems, eyes, ears, nose, skin, it processes it and reacts. It's like a stimulus-reaction. For those of you who know, behaviouralism is like this. You were hit, you jumped, you were scalded, it hurts. This is such a simple thing. Yes, but it's not like that. It's like that, but it's not only like that. We collect facts from below. We can't put experiments on people. I mean hard experiments. It's impossible for ethical reasons. But experiments are being done. I don't mean behavioural experiments that are being done in all humanities, but we take animals and we understand that we are much more complicated, but we just get something from them, and then it will build itself. It's the same, just more complicated. That's where I started. We increase sizes, power, speed. No, it's not like that. It's a wrong hope. It's a very complicated brain of a raven or an even more complicated brain of a chimpanzee or an elephant or a dolphin. I used to work with dolphins, but that's a separate topic. I repeat, it's more complicated. It's a wrong step. There's a fundamental mistake here. I'm writing here, but I don't explain who he is. There was a great lecture called Birds and Frogs in Mathematics and Physics. It was a lecture of a Nobel Prize winner. He published it later. By the way, it's in a serious publication in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences. It's a great work. It's not only about mathematicians and physicists. I checked. There are scientists-birds who are not interested in facts with all apologies. But they see far. They fly high, see forests, meadows, mountains, the planet. Of course, they are interested in what experimental science has discovered, but they can't do without it. And there are frogs. For example, I'm a frog and I'm very jealous of my friends who also have Nobel Prizes, who are birds. I love the Earth. I collect small facts. I'm interested in them, in those who work with linguistic facts, who work in our science with tomographs, encephalographs. It's our frog business. But it's not the only way. The brain works with meanings. I put this diagram here. These red threads are how connections are depicted in the brain. It's not a picture. It's what happens in the brain when a person, let's say, reproduces something or invents something. These are connections. These are not real neurons, but connections. It's not a picture, but a video. This yellow thread is what, maybe, they'll find later, but so far they haven't found any of our brothers, smaller animals, on the planet. And these are connections that are occupied with semantics and not with meaning. As a professional, I can tell you that linguists play with everything. They play with any algorithms, they play with syntax. All the important things that make up this very complex language system, their meanings are stronger. Therefore, when we study what happens in the brain the problem is that the world we live in is constantly changing. And not only in the big sense that many have already talked about today from the opening of this wonderful meeting, but in a much simpler one. The lighting changes, the sound changes, the mood changes, other people participate in the conversation. Yesterday you were friends, today you are enemies. So physically and socially everything depends on the context. I would even say such a pathos thing now that the context is the main player. Who said, to whom said, when said, what happened a minute before that or five centuries before that, only you don't know about it, because you didn't study well. To catch something from the world that changes every millisecond remains a huge mystery for us, just a mystery. Because science, as we all scientists here understand, has rules of the game. By the way, the audience forgets about it when I am asked a question about subconsciousness, how to deal with it, there is clairvoyance. I say, I have nothing against it. Cards on the barrel, I would like facts. Because science works with facts. This is such a game. There is a game of golf, it has its own rules. There is a game of poker, others. There is a game of science. If we are talking about things-dreams, I admit that they exist. But if you ask me such a question as a scientist, not as an interlocutor at the fireplace, my honest answer will be I think so. The second answer will be I can't imagine how it can be. And you can't check it. What statistics can there be in history? Okay, let's get to the end. Moreover, we should keep in mind that with all the anthems towards Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer and the Big List, with all my love for the radio and the ideal discipline of thought, we should keep in mind that everything happens on the subconscious and on the subconscious. These are different things, and these are not all the words, by the way, about dictionaries. That is, there are many words, and they mean different things. If specialists were sitting here, they would kill each other in a minute and the same person would be killed in a different way. What statistics can there be in a dictionary? I really like to be a test subject. Even if I get into that dictionary myself, in three minutes I will understand what you want from me and I will give you a different answer. Or, out of character, I want to spoil the experiment for you. Or because I guessed before the algorithm, and I think, for example, if I use another algorithm, what will happen? And these things cannot be caught, at least not yet, I can't even imagine theoretically. The brain is not a computer. When you are told that the brain is a computer, if the brain is a computer, then it is definitely not like the ones we know, except that it is a quantum computer with which there are great difficulties. Therefore, we need to look, I think, not only at tomographs and encephalographs and this tough science, we need to look at how the best of our tribe created their masterpieces. We cannot get into the head, but we can get into the diaries, in the drafts, in the letters, and so on. In the drawing, let's say, when Pushkin outlines and draws a hundred times, this must be analyzed not only from the point of view of philology, but from our side. Why did he replace this word with this one? Why did he actually replace it? How did his thought go when he refused and refused, and then came back? We need to look, I would say, this is some kind of mental archeology, look at what this brain was able to do. Creativity, the ability to create something that did not exist in the world, this is our human trait. The power of thought and spirit, this is how we work, and not that our senses are so good, because there are a lot of creatures on the planet who have incomparably better vision, hearing, they have echolocation, they see frequencies and ultrasound, they hear infrasound. There are a lot more creatures who can do better than we do, but still, while we have not destroyed ourselves, we are still the strongest on this planet, not at the expense of ears and eyes, but at the expense of the fact that we have such an incredible brain. I am really moving towards the end. Therefore, we must look through another prism from the side of art, because God forbid, something will happen to this planet, and then someone will come or be born again and see what is left of us. I assure you, it will not be a coffee maker, what they will pay attention to. They will pay attention to music, to poetry, to painting. If there is anything left, then the geniuses are dragging us. I will say such a terrible thing. Therefore, paradoxically, it is necessary to study the brain as a carrier and creator of meanings, and a lot of different people are needed for this. This is what we have in cognitive science, including at our institute, and many others. In the Moscow State University, we have friends, colleagues, and academician Anokhin, who is the director of the Institute of Prospective Brain Research. This is what we have been talking about for hundreds of hours. This is a combination of neuroscience, linguistics, mathematics, and a special language of arts, which is very difficult to incorporate into this discourse. These are different languages. The last couple of slides are about this. There are serious challenges both for pedagogy and for cognitive science. We need to use all this and come up with something to create programs and training formats of a different type. We cannot… You see, we don't really need people who don't know much, because this is what artificial intelligence does. It remembers more than we do. There is no point in playing with these technical things. We need someone who thinks. Artificial intelligence is a creator of words. It doesn't think yet. It can do a lot of things, but it doesn't think. When a child leaves the mother's womb with gadgets in his hands, when he comes to his teacher, what should he do? He is told to sit on this chair and eat this table. He has Alice in his pocket. What should a teacher do? How to teach such teachers? Where can we find such teachers? Should we bring them from Mars? We should teach them. What should we teach them? The last thing is that teachers are taught, but are parents taught? Parents know what to do with their children. They think that if they gave birth to them, these children are their property. Why don't you treat them yourself? Why do you go to the dentist? It's true. You shouldn't know what to do with these children. Absolutely not. That's why we shouldn't run away, but think. We need to agree how to live in this new world. We shouldn't lose the basic idea of reality. The virtual world is almost better than the original. It's getting better and better. Everyone says that fakes are better than originals. It doesn't change anything. Fakes are better than originals. Where should peasants go? How should we live in this world? We should learn to live in it. It depends on whether we like it or not. I want to thank you for your patience. I invited this girl here for a reason. We shouldn't lose the human aspect of the world in the face of a fast-changing world. It's human. Artificial intelligence, including my friends, are very strong. If artificial intelligence sees this girl with peaches, it will see the answer. I know it. It's the recognition of visual images and great success. But my question is different. Will it understand what it sees? Will it describe everything to you? Or will it watch the great movie by Chaplin about the fire of the big city? You can cry no matter how much you watch it. We all know about it. Will it have this? If we are so stupid that we lose this ability in this new world, then we shouldn't develop to come to this dead end. Sorry for my pathos. Thank you for your patience.