Brain Mechanisms and Constructed Languages vs. Natural Languages
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"Constructed Languages Are Processed by the Same Brain Mechanisms as Natural Languages." Malik-Moraleda, Saima, et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122, no. 12 (March 17, 2025): e2313473122.
Significance
What constitutes a language has been of interest to diverse disciplines—from philosophy and linguistics to psychology, anthropology, and sociology. An empirical approach is to test whether the system in question recruits the brain system that processes natural languages. Despite their similarity to natural languages, math and programming languages recruit a distinct brain system. Using fMRI, we test brain responses to constructed languages (conlangs)—which share features with both natural languages and programming languages—and find that they are processed by the same brain network as natural languages. Thus, an ability for a symbolic system to express diverse meanings about the world—but not the recency, manner, and purpose of its creation, or a large user base—is a defining characteristic of a language.
Abstract
What constitutes a language? Natural languages share features with other domains: from math, to music, to gesture. However, the brain mechanisms that process linguistic input are highly specialized, showing little response to diverse nonlinguistic tasks. Here, we examine constructed languages (conlangs) to ask whether they draw on the same neural mechanisms as natural languages or whether they instead pattern with domains like math and programming languages. Using individual-subject fMRI analyses, we show that understanding conlangs recruits the same brain areas as natural language comprehension. This result holds for Esperanto (n = 19 speakers) and four fictional conlangs [Klingon (n = 10), Na’vi (n = 9), High Valyrian (n = 3), and Dothraki (n = 3)]. These findings suggest that conlangs and natural languages share critical features that allow them to draw on the same representations and computations, implemented in the left-lateralized network of brain areas. The features of conlangs that differentiate them from natural languages—including recent creation by a single individual, often for an esoteric purpose, the small number of speakers, and the fact that these languages are typically learned in adulthood—appear to not be consequential for the reliance on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms. We argue that the critical shared feature of conlangs and natural languages is that they are symbolic systems capable of expressing an open-ended range of meanings about our outer and inner worlds.
Pursuing the questions raised in this paper will help us distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic domains of intellectual inquiry — math, music, art….
Selected readings
- "The origin and progress of linguistic norms" (2/22/09)
- "Natural language and artificial intelligence" (5/29/04)
[Thanks to Ted McClure]
Laura Morland said,
April 17, 2025 @ 9:05 am
Being married to a mathematician who often complains about the difficulty in translating the concepts in his head into a natural language (in his case, English), I was initially eager to learn the results of this study. This sentence in particular looked promising:
"Despite their similarity to natural languages, math and programming languages recruit a distinct brain system."
To my disappointment, the authors apparently only studied Klingon and other made-up languages. Their results are unsurprising, and will shed no light on the brain function of a mathematician or computer scientist.
Victor Mair said,
April 17, 2025 @ 9:42 am
"Despite their similarity to natural languages, math and programming languages recruit a distinct brain system."
Yves Rehbein said,
April 17, 2025 @ 12:54 pm
I always had the impression that something like UG would be very similar to maths because I was introduced to he who shall not be named and the eponymous hierarchy of computation in Computer Science. Since UG as such never materialised there is perhaps no need to. Still it's quite easy to tell that TFA stands in the functional tradition—as in functional-MRI.
The broader question of how they define language and the "brain mechanisms" may still be debatable. Their main reference on that says: "We emphasize that the language network works closely with, but is distinct from, both lower-level — perceptual and motor — mechanisms and higher-level systems of knowledge and reasoning." Fedorenko et al. 2024.
Edith said,
April 18, 2025 @ 4:10 am
Programming consists in finding ways of Saying How To Do Things in such a way that an utterly literal hearer does what you meant, not what you said.
Almost every computer software problem you have ever heard of comes from our inability to infallibly Say How To Do Things.
Any parent of a maliciously-complying toddler knows Saying How To Do Things accurately is not a core human skill. So it is unlikely to have co-evolved with natural language skills.
Philip Taylor said,
April 18, 2025 @ 3:32 pm
"Any parent of a maliciously-complying toddler knows Saying How To Do Things accurately is not a core human skill" — as demonstrated by one of my (horse) riding instructors, who on one memorable occasion told me to "open [my] right hand". I did as instructed, dropped the right rein (of course), and was thereupon chided — "No, move your right hand further away from your body !". I suppose that those intimately familiar with horse-riding jargon might have immediately inferred her meaning, but I for one did not …