To the brain, Esperanto and Klingon appear the same as English or Mandarin.
To the brain, Esperanto and Klingon appear the same as English or Mandarin.
MIT research finds the brain’s language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on “Star Trek” and High Valyrian and Dothraki on “Game of Thrones.”
I'm not surprised.
All of those constructed languages were modelled after natural languages, either to give a tongue to some fictitious people (most of the listed) or to perform like an auxiliary language (Esperanto). So the difference between conlang and natlang here is just one of origin.
In the meantime, those programming sets of instructions (Python, C, etc.) were created for something else, issuing instructions in code. On the very best you could analyse them as doing a fraction of what a language does, but in practice it's something else entirely.
I suspect their ultimate goal is to confirm or refute the common theory that there’s a general mental faculty for recursion that’s used both for natural language and for other recursive tasks (implying that language and recursive thought evolved together).
In previous work, Fedorenko and her students have found that computer programming languages, such as Python — another type of invented language — do not activate the brain network that is used to process natural language. Instead, people who read computer code rely on the so-called multiple demand network, a brain system that is often recruited for difficult cognitive tasks.
I’m curious if there’s some overlap between conlangs and programming languages, on the region level if not the network level. IIRC, the multiple demand network is a bit ill-defined and every region doesn’t necessarily activate for every task; and Fedorenko et al have their own idiosyncratic definition of the language network that omits anything that might also have other functions (including canonical regions like Broca’s and Wernike’s areas).
I’m curious if there’s some overlap between conlangs and programming languages, on the region level if not the network level.
I predict that, if there is such overlap, natural languages will also overlap the same way. Because in practice there's no individual difference between a highly developed conlang and a natlang.
Sure.
I suspect the motivation behind this study was to try to narrow down the deciding factor in the earlier study showing a difference between natural and programming languages—the next logical step would be looking at a more “artificial” conlang like Lojban (and/or a more “natural” programming language like ACE).
The end result will probably be some broader category of “language-network-interpretable” languages including natural and (some but maybe not all) conlangs.