Tamil writing proposal in closing, and, as a bonus, a Theory of History

It is now time to close this series of posts. I have had this proposal for a new way of writing Tamil kicking around my (many) laptops for a while but posted it to this blog only following the Pizza and Panini column for Indiatimes.com. Panini, in a sense, lives on!

Below are the links to all the posts on the Tamil writing proposal:

• Overview
• A modest proposal towards modernizing the Tamil language
• Response to some comments
• Harvard-Kyoto - an explanation
• More comments, examples
• A note of thanks

And in closing, something pretty. Below the fold is the brAhmI alphabet/alphasyllabary. It is, of course, studied by Buddhists for them to be able to understand ancient Buddhist texts, some of which were written in Pali. Just in and of itself, the brAhmI alphabet bears witness to the extraordinary influence that Panini still has around the world. I have a Theory of History which I have never posted about before. Want to know more? Click below to go to the rest of the post.

Tamil writing system proposal - Overview

This series of posts is intended to have the same precision of language and exposition as an academic paper but is written in an informal style so as to appeal to a broad audience. Here is an overview of the proposal that is intended to serve the same purpose as an Abstract in an academic paper.

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In this series of posts, we introduce new diacritical marks for the Tamil language. The proposal has the following five elements: (a) allow all consonant clusters; (b) represent the aspirated consonants using the aaytam symbol (the 'therefore' symbol in English, Unicode U+0B83) prefixing the consonant to be 'aspirated', i.e., to go from 'ka' to 'kha'; (c) represent the soft consonants using a horizontal bar (Unicode U+0955) going over the consonant to be 'softened' (, i.e., to go from 'ka' to 'ga', simply draw a horizontal bar over the 'ka'; optionally, place a backslash-underscore after the character); (d) use a horizontal bar to represent the 'R' (Unicode U+090B) sound found in Sanskrit in Tamil (the syllabic alveolar trill) (or, optionally, place a backslash-underscore after the character); (e) represent the additional vowel sounds in Modern Hindi using the crescent symbol (Unicode U+0945) to produce the two additional sounds for U+090D and U+0911 (or, optionally, place a backslash-parenthesis after the character); (f) represent long vowels using the 'avagraha' symbol from Devanagari (U+093D); and (g) represent consonant-vowel conjuncts using the 'pull' symbol (the 'dot' symbol in English going above the character in question) for the consonant followed by the vowel in question.

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Tamil writing system proposal - more comments and examples

I am writing this post nearly a year after the first post and so in this post, I would like to summarize the proposal for the Tamil writing system and, furthermore, add a symbol for the 'R' sound (as in kRshNa) to Tamil and capture two more sounds from modern Hindi. The 'R' character would be represented as a horizontal bar on top of the Tamil 'r' according to this proposal. Here is the proposal thus far:

1. Soft and aspirated sounds: To get (ka), (kha), (ga), (gha) in Tamil, just use one of the following:

a. In Tamil script: k, .: k, k\_, .: k \_

(here, the ".:" denotes the 'therefore' symbol and the '\_' denotes the horizontal bar).

b. ASCII: To represent this in ASCII, one could use the convention above where a period followed by a colon is used to denote the 'therefore' symbol and the backslash followed by an underscore is used to denote the horizontal bar as used in Sanskrit.

Note that a different way to represent this in ASCII is, of course, Harvard-Kyoto.

2. Conjuncts/consonant clusters: We allow all consonant clusters. We simply use the dot character to allow for consonant clusters of arbitrary length (e.g. lakshmya would be written as 'la' + 'k' with a dot on top + 'sh' with a dot on top + 'm' with a dot on top + 'ya'.

3. 'R': We represented the 'R' character by a Tamil 'r' character with a horizontal bar on top. Optionally, this may also be represented by the 'backslash-underscore' combination following the 'r' character in Tamil.

4. Chandra/Crescent symbol for a: We represent the 'a' sound (as in 'hat') using the arc symbol used in Modern Hindi. The arc symbol would go either on top of the preceding consonant OR if there was no preceding consonant, it would go on top of the character for 'a'. (this is the same as in Hindi). This can also be represented using a backslash followed by a parenthesis. e.g. 'hat' could be written as 'ha' with a horizontal bar on top + '\(' + 'T'.

5. Chandra/Crescent symbol for 'o': We represent the 'o' sound (as in 'got') using the arc symbol used in Modern Hindi. The arc symbol would go either on top of the preceding consonant OR if there was no preceding consonant, it would go on top of the character for 'A'. (this is the same as in Hindi). This can also be represented using a backslash followed by a parenthesis. e.g. 'got' could be written as 'kA' with a horizontal bar on top + '\(' + 'T'.

6. Consonant-vowel conjuncts: We allow for consonants with a dot to precede vowels to create consonant-vowel conjuncts. (e.g. 'Union' could be written as 'y' with a dot on top + 'U' + 'n' with a dot on top + 'i' + 'ya' + 'n' with a dot on top). This is an optional feature that reduces the learning curve. Now, in order to able to write conjuncts in Tamil, you only need to know how to write the corresponding character and how to write the vowel.

7. Avagraha/long vowels: We borrow the avagraha symbol, again from Devanagari, for prolonging vowel sounds. It is particularly useful for representing the 'schwa'. (e.g. University would be written as 'y' with a dot on top + 'n' with a dot on top + i' + 'va' + avagraha symbol + 'r' with a dot on top + 'si' + 'T' with a dot on top + 'i'.

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Below are some example words represented using the new diacritical marks.

Examples

1. rAma           = 'r' + the 'aa' symbol (the symbol that takes you from ra to raa) + 'm'

2. lakshmaNa  = 'l' (without the dot on top) + 'k' with the dot on top + 'z' (the first 'sh' character) with the dot on top + 'm' (without the dot on top) + 'N'
3. bharata          = '.:' + 'p' with a horizontal bar on top + 'r' (without the dot on top) + 't' (without a dot on top)
4. shatrughNa   = 'z' (the first 'sh' character) + 't' with a dot on top + 'ru' + .: + 'k' with a horizontal bar as well as a dot on top + 'N'
5. Tattoine         = 'T' + the arc symbol on top of the 'T' + 'T' with a dot on top + 'Too' + 'i' (small i) + 'n' with a dot on top.
6. Skywalker     = 's' with a dot on top + 'k' plus the prefix for the 'ai' (Harvard-Kyoto) sound + 'v' + the 'aa' symbol (the symbol that takes from ra to raa) with a crescent on top + 'k' with a dot on top + 'k' + 'r' with a dot on top.

Tamil writing system proposal - a note on the alphabet

A very short note on the Tamil alphabet. There are (around) 36 characters in the Tamil alphabet. Here is the Harvard-Kyoto table with the Tamil characters underlined and highlighted. Not all the characters in Tamil are part of this list and not all characters in the list, as can be seen, are part of the alphabet. Just so people can follow along.

 a A i I u U R RR lR lRR e ai o au M H
   k kh g gh G c ch j jh J
   T Th D Dh N t th d dh n
   p ph b bh m y r l v z S s h
                             

The quality of the IITs - some (anecdotal) supporting evidence

Via Naveen Koorakula, who also happens to be an IITian, I came across a link to this somewhat peculiar story on a conversation between an IIT graduate and a rickshaw driver. I don't have the time to translate it (the conversation is in Hindi) but it is really quite the interesting chat.

I would like to present this as supporting evidence of my previous claim regarding the public reputation of the IITs. I am, of course, using public information (the reputation thing) such as this, and so it is theoretically possible that there is some privately held information which would show that this public information is, in fact, false. But given the transparency of the admission process, this seems highly unlikely. It is possible that someone is somehow tampering with the admission process while being careful enough to leave no traces of the act. But evidence for this would be very easy to find - from time to time, you would get an utter idiot who somehow manages to sneak in - but evidence such as this has, thus far, not been forthcoming.

It is very hard for me, therefore, to reject the hypothesis that the public reputation of the IITs is due to its high quality.

=+=

There were two rickshaw-walas vying for our business when we wanted to go to Sankat-Mochan temple in Benaras. I agreed to go with the one who was about 20, seemed like a regular young rickshaw-wala, but I found something interesting about this fellow in his eyes. I was not proved wrong.
He wanted Rs 50, we said Rs 30. We settled for 40. Here are the highlights of the conversation that ensued while he rode the rickshaw:

Have the subsidies given to IITs been a good investment for the Indian government? - Further comments

Five further comments on the IIT post (I am moving my blog updates from Thursday into a post of its own and have added a fifth comment):

Comment 1: A very short analysis of what is wrong with Atanu Dey's argument : He assumes that education in the sciences does not have any value over and beyond getting into a university, institute or college, and he also assumes that education does not have sufficiently large positive externalities. That $1.3 billion estimate by Atanu Dey is a measure of value added to the Indian economy, not value destroyed. If the IITs were not there, this sector of the economy would not exist and so that is a net gain to the economy as a whole. The value of the education that students in these coaching classes get should be measured not in terms of whether they actually get into IIT but in terms of what value they get from it over their lifetimes.

Comment 2: Fixed up some typos. Note that $1.3 billion is a measure of the value added to the Indian economy, not an estimate. A measure simply gives you some idea of the variable being measured whereas an estimate must be at least somewhere in the ballpark of the actual value of the variable being measured.

Comment 3: It is not really very time optimal for me right now - given that I am on a long-awaited vacation and given my various other commitments - to spend any more time on this, and so I am going to be brief. Here are some very brief overall remarks on the matter of the IITs.

1. A more rigorous analysis is called for to make the sort of bold claims that Atanu is making: It would be useful to take a look at the balamce sheets of the some of the companies I mentioned - Infosys - et cetera to get some idea of the size of the numbers in question when comparing costs (the cost per year of umdergraduate education vi the IITs) and benefits (the net taxes being paid by the IT companies in India). At any rate, to do any convincing on this matter, a more rigorous analysis is called for which makes clear what, if any, were the assumptions made in the analysis.

I am prepared to agree with almost anyone but I don't think I have enough reason to do so in this case. If you read any economics paper in any of the management journals, you at least have some idea of where the disagreements may lie. These posts are surely not well argued and seem to be full of holes. Now, whether these holes cold be later papered over is not the question. The executive summary, the thesis and the supporting arguments have to be front and center in the posts. Furthermore, there has to be some technical paper of some sort somewhere that tells me what the model being used is. So far, I have found very little.

2. Quick-and-dirty back-of-the-envelope calculations seem to indicate the IITs to be a good investment: Basically, here is how I did my back-of-the-envelope calculation. I just took a look at the balance sheets of Infosys and some of the other software companies, and used that to get some ballpark estimates of the benefits of the IITs. I wish I had more time to write up an actual post, but I leave this as an exercise for the reader. Just draw up an Excel spreadsheet listing out the cost factor, apply some time discounting of costs in the past and add some reasonable premium to just be conservative. The aim here is to get a very rough ballpark estimate of the net cost of the investment. Assume that a portion of the taxes paid by (I sometimes hate to use the word 'rent' because it is so non-specific in terms of actual numbers) some of the software behemoths is attributable to the 'founder effect'. (Nobody wanted to invest in Narayana Murthy's company when it was small. Trust me on this one. He came to a number of professors' faculty houses at IIMA to get some initial investment for the firm now known as Infosys. Very few wanted to invest.) This is because the only reason he even got his foot in the door was because he had an academic background from the IITs. You now have some idea of the benefits accrued. By way of comparison, Pakistan and Bangladesh don't have the IITs and don't have an IT industry to speak of either.

3. Small investment value: We are not talking about massive dollar investments here. There actually isn't a whole lot of corruption in the IITs and so the money actually gets spent on what it is set aside for. One must really believe that the Indian gvoernment is going to be able to better utilize the 30 million dollars or so it spends on each IIT since that is after all the opportunity cost of the investment. And to agree with the opportunity cost argument, one must believe - and I am not prepared to believe it - that there will be little or no corruption involved. 30 million dollars after the pigs have fed at the trough would be something like 5 million dollars - if you are lucky. (That is about 1/3th of the Las Vegas buffet's cost. Just sayin') I fail to see how this could bring about anything like the sort of results one can reasonably attribute to the IITs.

Comment 4: What are some empirically sound things that one could say about the IITs. a) They are probably never going to feature very high in World Rankings of Universities; b) The very high selectivity of the undergraduate program (at least until the mid-2000's) creates an undergraduate student population that is high in terms of motivation, scientific and/or technological talent and application, and given the very high level of selectivity, the undergraduate student population is - on academic terms- comparable to the student population in other institutes of technology such as MIT and Caltech ; c) The students in the Masters programs are harder to empirically analyze since less is known about them other than the fact that their entrance exam scores are high (the GATE entrance exams used to be multiple-choice and choosing people based on multiple-choice tests usually leads to skewed populations). This does not mean that they are less smart. It just means that we have a population that is harder to make strong statements regarding.

Comment 5: A couple of things that have not been sufficiently addressed in the arguments on IITs : the matter of the PhDs and this other business of public reputation. First, the PhDs. It is odd to completely ignore the PhDs in any analysis of an academic department or institution. What one would expect here is that (a) low investment research areas (projects in computer science can be very low investment) would be of excellent quality and (b) the quality of PhD theses in these areas would also be of very high quality. This is, in fact, what one sees. The Database Group at IIT Mumbai is very strong and is arguably one of the world's best. The PhD theses in theoretical computer science are often excellent as well. And second, the matter of public reputation. It would be very odd if an academic institution could sustain a very high public reputation over decades and yet have serious organizational failures. If anything, the IITs are a good example of how governments can run high performance organizations. If it is indeed the case that the IITs suffer from major organizational failures (just keep it real, folks!), then it is, by all means, okay to post about these. But nothing I have read so far in the couple of posts that I have gone through seems to suggest that major organizational failures actually exist. And finally, an acknowledgement : the phrasing "a good investment for the Indian government" is due to Prof. Ananth Raman at HBS.

Have the subsidies given to IITs been a good investment for the Indian government?

So I emailed Prof. Ananth Raman, Professor at Harvard Business School and alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, regarding the IITs. The matter in question is whether the IITs have been a good investment for the Indian government. The short answer to the question is "Yes". Prof. Ananth Raman concurs with me on this matter.

My email to him is pasted below. Please note that the EdNotes (in italics) were added by me later in preparation for this blog post. Please note the typo in the usage of the word 'alumnae'. The correct term is 'alumni'. One of the great things about having been to Stanford and Harvard is that when you have typos in your emails, people do the auto-correction themselves. Stanford + Harvard joint reference FTW! 

I should add that I was at the Bacchanal buffet yesterday in Las Vegas. How much did the buffet cost to build? 17 MILLION DOLLARS. Two buffets such as this one and we are already there. In this age of easy, I wonder how anyone can believe that an investment in STEM education that amounts to less than 40 million dollars such as this one could be considered a bad one. Remember that we are talking about the Indian economy which is a >$1.8 trillion dollar economy in nominal terms and a >$4.5 trillion dollar economy in PPP terms. 

I fail to see Atanu's point regarding welfare maximization. How could the cost of the coaching classes be considered welfare decreasing even from a purely neo-classical point of view? I mean - let's forget about institutions. Let us do a simple purely self-interest based analysis. Here is a large number of people who independently, freely choose to spend money on a service. Would they do it if the option was not increasing their utility? And if it is increasing the utility of so many people, then how could the activity be welfare decreasing? I don't want to spend any more time reading through Atanu Dey's numerous posts on this topic. There are times when one must decide that there are other things that are a better use of one's time and this, frankly, is one of them.

P.S. This may well be the first ever post on the Indian economy which uses the sentence "Stanford + Harvard joint reference FTW!".

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Dear Prof. Ananth Raman,

I trust this finds you well.

I recently came across a blog post by Berkeley Ph.D. Atanu Dey arguing that the IITs are : (a) "not all that they are cracked up to be" (which is a safe thing for anyone to say since it could mean anything); (b) a net welfare loss for the economy as a whole (wow! I mean, wow!) (EdNote: Exact quote from Atanu Dey : "One of my major points is that the subsidies given to IITs (and other tertiary education institutes) is regressive and welfare decreasing.") and (c) a drain on the economy since they represent a 'subsidy' and so the subsidy should, of course, be stopped (Link : http://www.deeshaa.org/2013/03/29/the-iits-are-not-really-what-they-are-cracked-up-to-be/).

This sounds like one of those loony rightwing talking points memos which propose tax cuts as a solution for everything, and I say this even though my political beliefs are somewhat to the right of center even in America. To put it really bluntly, I find the post to be almost entirely nonsensical. IITs have turned up in a couple (if not more) of our discussions in the past (and speaking of our conversations, I must confess that I did not quite pick up on your cues on IIT during my conversations with you - there are several reasons for that which I shall not get into). Anyway, as alumnae (EdNote: sic), I hope I may broach the matter of whether the IITs should be paid for the Indian government (EdNote: <stuff deleted>).

Is the Presidential System a better system for India?

Speaking of Shashi Tharoor: it has been a major thoughtpoint of Shashi Tharoor's over the past couple of years that India would be better off with a Presidential System. Would a Presidential System be better for India? My short answer is : No. More on that below, but just to clarify : this is what I was talking about when I said that "I don't believe much of the other stuff [Tharoor] has written as well" in my previous post. 

A sampling of his opinion on this matter : 

“I believe that the Presidential system would be far better in our country than the Parliamentary system because of the nature of our polity and the fact that we have so many political parties, coalition governments have the say in the last couple of decades,” Tharoor said. He also said, “Parliamentary system sadly privileges a situation where checks and balances outweigh the possibility of decisive action and instead of electing someone to get something done and then holding him/her accountable at the next elections, we are essentially forced to elect someone who spends a large portion of their time try ing to stay in power rather than exercising their power in terms of effective governance.” 

Vivek Dehejia in the New York Times argued against this proposal raising four major points against the idea.

(1) The best government is the one you can get rid of most easily. (2) Voting patterns are not independent of the electoral system, and you may get something you didn’t wish for.  (3) Lack of decisiveness in government is not always, or even usually, socially undesirable. (4) Because of its complexity and importance, great prudence should be exercised in introducing sweeping constitutional reforms.

Points #3 and #4 are arguably the most weighty ones, the one with the most bearing on the matter at hand. The economy of India is doing quite well now that the government is out of the way in the growth sectors and there is no reason to bring it back in. Further to these points, here are three other reasons why the Presidential System is not a good one for India.

Shashi Tharoor on the English language - some errors in his analysis

This article by Shashi Tharoor in the New York Times came up on the BAQC Facebook group earlier today.

An English friend of mine says that he nearly had a heart attack on a flight in the United States when the American pilot announced that the plane would be airborne "momentarily.' 'In British English, the language my friend speaks, "momentarily" means "for a moment," and he thought the pilot was suggesting an imminent crash soon after takeoff. In American English, however, "momentarily" means "in a moment," and the pilot was merely appeasing the impatient passengers.

I had my suspicions that Shashi Tharoor was not, in fact, accurately representing the subject matter. I had my suspicions, that's all. This is not intended to be a commentary on Shashi Tharoor himself. Although I hate to miss out on any opportunity to call into question a politician's motives.

Some of it was pretty clearly false.

A British linguist once told a New York audience that whereas a double negative could make a positive, there was no language in the world in which a double positive made a negative. A heckler put paid to his thesis in forthright American: "Yeah, right."

So, yeah, this is an old joke. "Yeah, yeah" and "Yeah, right" are two instances of usage in the English language where two positives seem to make a negative. But it occurred to me that, besides that problem, Shashi Tharoor was mistaken in ascribing this to the differences between British usage of the English language versus American. It is, in fact, a matter of context. (This would be studied as part of what is known as pragmatics in linguistics.) Even a British speaker of the English could say 'yeah, right' (and also 'yeah, yeah') to imply disagreement. The tone of voice is what would give away the context in this case. Unless, of course, the speaker is a teenager. Those fellows give nothing away.

As for Shashi Tharoor's point on the usage of the word "momentarily", it turns out that Mark Liberman has written up an entire post on this topic.

Cavett wrote: 

When the flight attendant would say, “We will be landing in Chicago momentarily,” I used to enjoy replying, “Will there be time to get off?” But I see the forces of darkness have prevailed, and this and many wrong uses are now deemed acceptable by the alleged guardians of our language, the too-quickly supine dictionary makers. Are they afraid of being judged “not with it”? What ever happened to, “Everybody does it don’t make it right”? 

I chose the quotation because it's an especially clear example of the sentiment that usage, no matter how widespread and how authoritative, doesn't outweigh the peever's sense that a certain usage is somehow morally wrong. But having chosen the passage, I felt in duty bound to check the implication that the evil sense of momentarily is a recent development, limited to ill-educated flight attendants and similar corporate drudges.

It was my understanding too that the word 'momentarily' should be used in the sense of 'for a moment'. People who use the word 'momentarily' in the 'soon' sense may strike some as ill-educated or under-educated but that usage, in fact, has some history to it. It is merely a deprecated usage of the word. It has little do with the differences between British and American English. So, anyway, Shashi Tharoor is quite mistaken on many points in this article. I don't believe much of the other stuff he has written as well. Poor Mr. Tharoor. The trouble with being a politician is nobody believes you even when you are being sincere. Because it is just so hard for anybody to tell.

Hindu Studies Post 4 - Hello, I am George Ringo and I am your new Pope

No, seriously. How come Hinduism doesn't have anyone with the 'Authority' that somebody at the head of an organization such as the Catholic Church has? One can blame colonialism, racism, and a bunch of other -isms, but these explanations seem not to address the fact that colonialism is an -ism of the past, the fact that racism doesn't seem to have blunted the aspirations of the non-white contenders for Popedom, et cetera, et cetera.

As part of the main thesis of this series of posts, I would like to argue that there are actually three main reasons that Hinduism has until now lacked an 'Authority':

1. the constitution of India : India is, of course, the birthplace of Hinduism. The constitution of India has significant lacunae in its treatment of free speech and this makes it impossible for people to freely speak their minds;
2. the network structure of Hinduism makes it impossible for a large 'Population' of Hindus to agree on anything.  
3. A third reason is that, and this is important too, edcuated Indians are generally willing to give anyone who has an opinion a chance to speak, and are often more concerned about fairness than about correctness.

Now, correctness in academic inquiry comes from both knowledge and methodology and the problem is that very few of the intellectuals have good methodology. As recently as 2004, we have had someone wih the reputation of Pankaj Mishra strenuously arguing that 'Hinduism is largely a fiction'. Even a first pass on his article shows that the argument lacks any methodology whatsoever. Here is Pankaj Mishra in Axess magazine, his article now having been picked up by somebody at Columbia. 

Hinduism is largely a fiction, formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries out of a multiplicity of sub-continental religions, and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian modernisers. Unlike Muslims, Hindus have tended to borrow more than reject, and it has now been reconfigured as a global rival to the big three monotheisms.

Hindu Studies Post 3 - Blistering barnacles

Bad ideas are like barnacles. They have a tendency to hold on. In Hindu Studies, there has been this tendency to think that every opinion is created equal. This is an understandable intellectual response to the organizational nature of Hinduism. If there is no organization that can serve as an 'Authority' (as, for example, the Catholic Church for Catholicism), then surely, all opinions must be equal. (Ed Note: Of course, they are not). My thesis, as part of this series of posts, is that Hinduism is different from other religions in that it does not possess a hierarchical structure but rather has a network structure. This is the reason for the mistaken intellectual response that you often see.

The same sort of mistake, oddly enough, also happens in India Studies, but it may be a bit more involved to state why. The reason is incentives. Professors have no incentive to point out mistakes in the work of others. Tenure decisions are not made based on how much you help other academics correct their analysis. It is much better to execute a policy of 'live and let live' wherein nobody finds fault with anybody else. This strategy is a Nash equilibrium. And not surprisingly, that is exactly what professors do.

Unfortunately for these professors, they are many of us who know that not all opinions are indeed created equal. An academic paper is much more likely to convince if it has the backing of sound mathematical statistics and solid numbers. The non-mathematical approach to academe continues to be popular, but it is unfortunately a recipe for disaster. What we have in place of actual intellectual analysis is a perfect storm of confusion. In the case of Hinduism, billions of people with billions of ideas about their faith, all of them somehow treated as correct. In the case of India Studies, hundreds of academics with conflicting ideas about India, all of them somehow consistent. I suppose anything else would be considered 'privileging' according to the so-called Theories of Power fancied by the Marxists.

Below is an example of this sort of a mess. The article I had linked to before by Paul Brass clearly suffers from this same sort of a non-mathematical analysis problem. The author argues that secularism in India is somehow different from that in other countries. To a social scientist, this is an inconsistent, even bizarre, position. Why is it be different? Why should it be different? Why are the social scientific methodologies that are already providing excellent insights on the economics and political economy of India invalid? The answer is straightforward : they are not.

Assorted links on secularism in India

Assorted links on secularism in India:

1. Secularism in India
2. Indian Secularism in Practice
3. Legalizing Religion : The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism

Also, see the Wikipedia article on Secularism in India.

Marginal Revolution University on India - insanely great

So I emailed Tyler Cowen in regards to his comments on India (specifically, on the so-called Kerala model of development) in a recent interview and he pointed me to MRUniversity.com which is a spin-off from his blog Marginal Revolution.

The teaching materials on MRUniversity.com on India are - one must be careful in one's choice of adjectives here - insanely great. I particularly like his three videos on Amartya Sen because they capture his ideas extremely well. Although I don't share Amartya Sen's views on the role of the private sector in boosting economic growth in India, his is, I think, an important voice that lends support to certain important moral ideas for India.

Below are links to the Amartya Sen videos on MRUniversity.com.

• Amartya Sen #1 : http://mruniversity.com/courses/development-economics/amartya-sen-1
• Amartya Sen #2 : http://mruniversity.com/courses/development-economics/amartya-sen-2
• Amartya Sen #3 : http://mruniversity.com/courses/development-economics/amartya-sen-3

Check 'em out! Updates on this topic to follow.

Another Gangnam Style video

Continuing the theme of serendhomophony, here is another misheard lyrics version of the song "Gangnam Style".

 

n-ary variables

One problem with the concept of binary oppositions is that it seems to imply that Western philosophical thought is concerned only with two-valued quantities. For instance, a coin toss X is an event that may be represented as follows.

X = { H, T }.

Other two valued quantities :

X1 = {"good", "evil" }
X2 = {"on",   "off"  }
X3 = {"left", "right" }

Note that these are all the examples from the Wikipedia article on "binary opposition".
However, some variables can take three values.

Y = { +, - , 0 }

Y1 = {"good", "evil", "neither good nor evil"}
Y2 = {"on", "off", "neither on or off"}
Y3 = {"left", "right", "neither left nor right"}

You could have a N valued quantity for many different values of N. Here are two
examples of seven valued quantities.

Z1 = {"M", "T", "W", "R", "F", "S", "N" } --> for the days of the week
Z2 = {"black", "white", "American Indian", "Asian Indian", "Chinese", "Filipino", "Samoan"}

Western philosophical thought has ben concerned with seven valued quantities as well. As, for instance, in any analysis in which days of the week enters the picture. Also, some of the quantities that Western philosophical thought has considered have been continuous variables as well.

Speed of Zeno's arrow = {x | x >= 0 }
Velocity of Zeno's arrow = {x1 | -infinity < x < +infinity}

The problem of continuous quantities  has not been considered by Jacques Derrida. Note that if the example of 'left' and 'right' given in the Wikipedia article on binary oppositions was intended to refer to political preferences, please note that individual political preferences may be considered multi-dimensional (some varying level of authoritarianism on one axis and another varying level of left-versus-right on another axis - as for example in PoliticalCompass.org's PoliticalCompass thing) and so the idea of 'left' and 'right' may be approximations too. The reason I am bringing this stuff up is that it is entirely unclear why Derrida manages to get so much attention when his theory leaves so much out.

Comment : 3QD comment on Derrida

Here are my comments on Derrida posted on "Three Quarks Daily" (slightly edited).

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As recreation while preparing for a graduate program at a certain business school, I was reading a bit of Derrida. I was not impressed.

I, for one, continue to be underwhelmed by virtually all of Derrida's 'theories'. It is unclear to me that his contributions to modern thought, and that of the deconstructionists, amounts to anything more than the following single sentence. "A line of text can be amibiguous in meaning."

Other than that totally trivial observation, it beats me what Derrida has really said or contributed to the world of intellectual thought. Indeed, I would term Derrida's work philosophizing for the lazy intellectual. 'Lazy' because a good analysis based on mathematics and statistics would resolve these 'binary oppositions' that Derrida talks about. If there were "binary opposition"s and they were a construction of the "West", then how could the same sort of analytical tools that are used in the "West" are also effective in the "East" - e.g. in countries like India and China?

n-ary oppositions

I am coining a new term in the field of deconstructionism and in the field of Western philosophical thought. It is the term "n-ary opposition". It is, I believe, a new concept for Western philosophy. Below is an explanation of n-ary opposition. To be honest, it is a bit of a cut-and-paste of the Wikipedia entry for "binary opposition". But I am perfectly serious about all of this.

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N-ary opposition


In critical theory, an n-ary opposition (also n-ary system) is a set of n related terms or concepts which are spread over a 'spectrum' of meaning. The term, introduced by the columnist Anand Manikutty, is also used to refer to the opposition that exists among the n concepts. Binary and ternary oppositions are common types of n-ary oppositions. A binary opposition is a set of two related terms or concepts which are opposite in meaning. A ternary opposition is a set of three related terms or concepts. A ternary opposition may be a set of three related terms of concepts out of which two are opposite in meaning and the third is a null concept. Ternary opposition, also a term introduced by Anand Manikutty, is the system by which, in language and thought, three theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off agsinst one another. It is the contrast between three mutually exclusive terms, such as positive, negative and zero. Another example : up, down and "middle" (although various other terms may be used in place of "middle" such as zero position). A third example is left, right and "middle". Again, various other terms may be used in place of "middle".

N-ary opposition is proposed as an important concept within structuralism which sees such distinctions as fundamental to all language and thought. In this extension of structuralism, a n-ary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture and language.

Serendipity in languages

The three posts ( one , two , three ) below form a set of posts on the topic of serendipity in languages. Please do send me a note if you have thoughts or comments on this.

I really do prefer to use the terms 'pseudoreduplication'/'pseudoreduplicates' although I am proposing the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendreduplication'/'serendreduplicates'. Also, I would prefer to use the terms 'pseudohomophones'/'psuedohomophony' where I am using the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendhomophones'/'serendhomophony'. I will be using these terms interchangeably. The use of 'serend-' terminology is there to disambiguate matters if any confusion should arise.

Update: Thanks to my friend Krishna Kunchithapadam for his suggestions, including and particularly the point on retaining the use of the terms 'pseudoreduplication' and 'pseudohomophony'.

Second Update: Note that 'pseudohomophony/'serendhomophony' is a statistical concept. If a significant fraction of speakers of language B think that word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A, then XB and XA are 'pseudohomophones'/'serendhomophones'.

Third Update (Nov 30, 4:34 pm): Note that my definition of 'serendhomophony' is general enough to cover the case where word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A for a particular performance, for instance, for a single Youtube video of a song. A different Youtube video of the same song could lead to a different word XB-1A in language B to being a homophone of the word XA in language A.

You could think of the performance of a song performance you listen to on Youtube as a process. It is a process (cf. stochastic process) producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. Simultaneously, it is also a process producing the words XB1, XB2, ..., XBn in language B for speakers of language B serendhomophonous with XA1, XA2, ..., XAn. And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC1, XC2, ..., XCn in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on. (You could cover every language and dialect on earth).

A different performance of the same song on Youtube will be a process  producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. But simultaneously, it will also be a process producing the words XB-1A, XB-2A, ..., XB-nA in language B for speakers of language B (serendhomophonously). And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC-1A, XC-2A, ..., XC-nA in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on.

Note that there are two levels of homophonousness here : per performance and per language.

More on serendhomophones and serendreduplication

So I am coining two new sets of terms in the field of linguistics. The first set is 'serendhomophony'/'serendhomophones' and the second one is 'serendreduplicates'/'serendreduplication'. Perhaps, people have been implicitly aware that this stuff was out there. But bringing something to explicit awareness by codifying it in academic language counts. And I don't think anyone has actually described it in the mathematical language of chance and probability. So here is a very simple but very precise description of these two terms.

First, 'serendhomophone'/'pseudohomophone'. A 'serendhomophone'/'pseudohomophone' is defined as follows. Sometimes, you may have a set of words/phrases in language A that are homophones with words/phrases in language B. This homophony is usually quite apparent for speakers of language B who don't know language A. These word/phrase pairs are called 'serendhomophones'.

Why does this happen? Pure chance. Every sound in language B maps to some sound in language A. So when words in language A are read out in close succession as in speech or song, the words in language A map to some arbitrary words in language B. (This mapping is not fixed. Based on intonation et cetera, the mapping can even change.) So essentially, words and phrases X1, X2 and X3 in language A that happen to map to words and phrases Y1, Y2 and Y3 in language B when they are spoken in a particular way and in a particular sequence. Note that there is a lot of serendipity in terms of what the particular word Y1 will end up meaning in language B. (Sounds have a more or less arbitrary assignment to meaning, generally speaking.) Note also that languages often don't have the same set of sounds, and so the correspondence between pseudohomophones may not really be very exact and often is not.

Here is a 'misheard lyrics' version of the Tamil song "Kalluri vaanil kaayndha nilaavo?" (now often referred to as "Benny Lava") featuring the Tamil dancer Prabhu Deva.



Note that Buffalax does not use actual pseudohomophones, but a subset of the sounds in the 'misheard lyrics' version of the song are pseudohomophones.

The first few pseudohomophones for the words in the song would be the ones below.

'Kalluri' <=> 'Cull lure E'
'vaanil' <=> 'Vaughn nil'
'kaayndha nilaavo' <=> 'coin the nil ah woe''

Now, for 'serendreduplicates'/'pseudoreduplicates'. 'Pseudoreduplicates' are words/stems of different origins that are thrown together to form 'duplication' within a word. (These words are also called 'serendreduplicates' in my terminology). 'Pseudoreduplication' is the phenomenon wherein a word looks like a reduplicate in that there is some apparent duplication within the word but the word is, in fact, not a reduplicate, and the reduplication has, in fact, arisen by chance.

In a nutshell, 'serendreduplicate'/'pseudoreduplicate' words have some 'duplication' in them that has arisen by sheer luck. It is worth emphasizing this point. Why does reduplication arise? Well, by pure chance. Or, you could call it serendipity.

Serendreduplication and serendhomophony

First a note on the terms 'serendreduplication' and 'seredreduplicates'. A Google search for pseudoreduplication returns no less than 44 hits, out of which at least two ( 1, 2 ) point to academic papers in linguistics. So I have decided to avoid the term 'pseudoreduplication' since that term is already being used in linguistics.

Footnote 2 in the paper by Avram has this to say about pseudo-reduplication. 'Also called “quasi-reduplicated forms” (Bakker 2003: 40), “phonological reduplicated base form” (Miller 2003: 290), “fixed forms” or “fossilized forms” (Wellens 2003: 226). The comparative Austronesian dictionary says this about 'Quasi-reduplicates' : "Quasi-reduplicates" are those words that lack the corresponding unreduplicated forms e.g. didi 'pig, swine', nisnis 'beard'. It seems that the original unreduplicated form may have been lost within the language leaving just the reduplicated form as a sort of fossil. Note that this is not at all what serendreduplication is. It is, well, something completely different.

Now, serendreduplication may be used to motivate the idea that many things in languages may have arisen purely out of chance. I can think of so many things like that. For instance, the (Chinese) name Yao (as in Dennis Yao) is the slang word in Tamil for 'sir' or 'man' (and comes from the word 'ayya'). Pure chance that it is the case. (Think of what it would be like if a guy walked up to a Tamil speaker and told him his name is "Yao Yennaya"). And there is also the more unfortunate case involving the firm "Lund International'. The name of the firm has a somewhat funny meaning in Hindi.

But the point is that this sort of serendipity arises. And this sort of serendipity is, in fact, exactly what Buffalax of misheard lyrics fame exploits all the time. So what should we call the pairs of words and phrases that sound the same in the 'misheard lyrics'? I say let us call them 'serendhomophones'. They are words or phrases that similar to each other but it is pure serendipity that it is so. Note that the correspondence is not exact. It is just "close enough". And so, that leaves us with the minor matter of naming the phenomenon. And that is simple. This phenomenon we shall call 'serendhomophony'/'pseudohomophony'.

Update: Another example of 'pseudoreduplication' would be the word 'metametals', a word that I just coined to describe elements which occur next to metals in the Periodic Table. Of course, many metals are also metametals.

The term 'metametals' could also be used to describe artificial 'metals' engineered to have certain types of properties, that is, a metamaterial that is a metal. The word 'metametal' is a good example of 'serendreduplication', and is probably a better example of 'serendreduplication'/'pseudoreduplication' than 'metamathematics'.                          

Second Update: Googling for 'metametals' returns plenty of hits.

Final Update: Here is a 'misheard lyrics' version of someone doing "Gangnam style". It is one funny video. But if you are a speaker of an Indian language as well as English, I absolutely insist that you watch it. That will give you an idea of what is going on in the brains of non-Tamil speakers when they hear the "Benny Lava" song. There is a remarkable correspondence between the lyrics for this version of the song and what you hear in your head if you are an English speaker who doesn't speak Korean. It is exactly the same thing that is going on with the "Benny Lava" song as well. Words that may not seem like homophones to you may, in fact, be homophones inside the brains of English speakers who don't speak Tamil.