Code-talker paradox

The code-talker paradox is an issue in linguistics that brings into question some fundamental ideas of the nature of languages. As such, the paradox is a problem in philosophy of language.

This term, coined by Mark Baker while speaking on the Navajo code talkers from WWII, raises the issue of how Philip Johnston and the code talkers were able to communicate in a way such that human beings created references that were mutually intelligible to each other but completely unintelligible to everyone who was not familiar with the structure and meaning of the signals. On the one hand, cryptanalysts were unable to decode messages in Navajo using the most sophisticated methods available to them. On the other hand, the code talkers were able to encrypt and decrypt messages with ease and rapidity simply by translating them into and from Navajo. Thus the code talker paradox refers to how human languages can be so similar that one can learn them both and gain the ability to translate from on to the other on-the-fly, yet so different that if one does not know a language, it impossible to derive the meaning of a text by analyzing it.

Baker resolves the paradox within the theory of universal grammar. Within universal grammar, there are certain parameters that are shared by all languages. Languages differ from one another in that a given parameter may have different settings across languages. The number of possible combinations of parameter settings accounts for the diversity of human languages, and the fact that every human brain is wired to process the same parameters means that to learn a new language, the brain simply adapts what it already knows. The brain recognizes the parameters of the first language to which it was exposed and when it processes a different language, it simply changes the values of corresponding parameters. Hence human languages vary greatly from one to the other, yet each human has the theoretical capacity to learn, converse in, and translate to and from, any human language.

References

• Baker, Mark C. The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar. Basic Books, 2001.

See also

• Drift (linguistics)
• List of Paradoxes
• Plato's problem
• The Analysis of Verbal Behavior
• Tower of Babel