An Analysis of Common Features Shared Between Natural Languages and Film Language
by
Xu, Tian
Xi’an International Studies University
Abstract
The very name ‘film language’ indicates that certain features of it remind people of natural languages. However, not much work has been done analyzing possible relations existing between film language and natural language. This paper examines common structures existing both in natural languages and film language (including animation language). It points out a similar tendency of pattern development appearing both in natural languages and film language. Finally, this paper comes to a conclusion that natural language and film language functions on a same mental process.
Keywords
natural language, film language, animation language, audio-visual language, post-positive modification, language evolution
Table of Contents
Abstract ii
Keywords iii
Table of Contents iv
Chapter 1 Basis For Analysis 5
Chapter 2 Common Features Shared Between The Two Systems 6
2.1 Process of Reality 6
2.2 Sequential Narrative 6
2.3 Syntagmatic Modification 7
2.3.1 Adjectival Modification 8
2.3.2 Adverbial Modification 8
2.4 Developing Pattern 8
2.4.1 Deconstruction of Meaning 8
2.4.2 Evolution through Metabolism 9
2.5 Dependence on Context 10
Chapter 3 Summary 11
Chapter 1
Basis For Analysis
The basis for analyzing natural language and film language (including animation language, sometimes both referred to as audio-visual language) together lies in their common function of conveying meaning. Since the incipience of evolution, animals exploited innumerous ways to communicate like the singing of birds and the dancing of bees. Humanity, in its early years, discovered that its vocal organ is capable of generating a large set of symbols and, in time, developed it into spoken language. History then saw a rise of writing systems developed from paintings on caves and signs on ceramics. Visual language, sharing the same provenance as that of written language evolved slowly from rupestrian art to comics until the advent of film. Visual art too evolved into a mature system through which abstract thinking can be outputted to some extent. As an old Chinese saying goes: ‘书画同源’, which means that ‘calligraphy and painting are of a common origin’. To conclude, natural languages and visual languages such as comics, film and animation are essentially all communication systems. Moreover, of the above mentioned communication systems, natural languages and film language especially in the form of animation language are advanced communication systems capable of expressing complex thoughts, which gives them a common ground for comparison.
Chapter 2
Common Features Shared Between The Two Systems
2.1 Process of Reality
As a threshold matter, natural languages and film language can be seen as output products of the mental process. Accordingly, the mind has the necessity to process reality before it can output natural language or film language.
Firstly, the temporally and spatially infinite reality has to be chopped and selected according to need in order to obtain useful information and leave out what is considered irrelevant. For instance, never, has anyone been able to tell the whole truth about how the world works and probably no one ever will. Physicists often filter out certain ‘interfering noise’ they deem unimportant and come to generally truth theories. As mental products like theories, natural languages and film language inevitably have to go through a similar process. Speakers project their own pattern of reality. Filmmakers too have to break down space and time for creative arrangement.
Secondly, even when reality is chopped into ‘chumps’, it is obligatory to filter and compress the generally continuous ‘chumps’ of reality of innumerous gradations and make them collapse in order to reduce their many information loaded ‘dimensions’ and record them on lower ‘dimensions’. For instance, the phonological system of natural language could be seen as utilizing limited ‘dimensions’ such as initials, finals etc to generate endless code units to store incomplete information extracted from reality. In comparison, colours, shadings etc could also be been as sets of different possibilities, or ‘dimensions’, which enable film to record reality. In filmmaking, once a point of view is set, it compresses the three dimensional space onto a two dimensional plane. The sense of a three dimensional space can be ‘reconstructed’ or ‘simulated’ by recording the movement of the camera which utilizes the ‘dimension’ of time. Although the shooting of films seems to be a process of copying reality, choice has to be made as to how to collapse it and arrange it on lower ‘dimensions’.
Thirdly, natural language and film language sometimes exhibit designed and even arbitrary abstraction of reality. In Modern English, people could say [ai] or write eye to refer to a type of organ; however, the word hardly resembles the organ either in spoken form or in written form. In visual language, imaginary lines which do not exist in reality are often used to denote surfaces and other spatial relations; stereotype colours are often assigned to objects; certain patterns are sometimes adopted for the sole purpose of emphasizing such as the typical radial lines around characters in Japanese manga.
2.2 Sequential Narrative
Though instances of single syllable utterances and single frame images abound in the parole of language and use of visual art, we encounter language and visual art often in the form of sequences of written symbols and frames of continuously played images capable of projecting complex mental experiences and ideas. Furthermore, the sequences of natural languages and film language are both outputs of mental activities. They have to be compressed and at the same time collapse into lower ‘dimensions’ compared to reality. As a consequence, certain ‘dimensions’ have to be overused as to record collapsed information stored in higher ‘dimensions’.
In human speech, single syllables are joined in sequence to generate words, phrases, sentences and even discourses. If one syllable cannot do the job, two syllables might do, and if two syllables cannot do the job, three syllables might do. What cannot be expressed by one utterance can be expressed by a concatenation of utterances.
In film language, in order to record as many points of view as possible, temporally homogeneous events must be aligned sequentially along the dimension of time. For instance, to explain an instantaneous situation in which a bomb explodes in a house, a valuable vase shatters and people in the street gets shook, a single frame of animation or even a single shot can hardly suffice due to constrained dimensions. The most probable solution to convey the above mentioned situation is to join several shots together in film editing, utilizing the unconstrained dimension of time for information storage and retrieval. Dimensions like time must be ‘sacrificed’ in order to compensate losses in other dimensions. In fact, even comics make use of this technique, however, like written language, they require readers to join the images sequentially and replay them mentally.
2.3 Syntagmatic Modification
It is universally acknowledged that there are syntagmatic relations in sentences. By the same token, shots in film and animation are also of syntagmatic relations. A common mental mechanism could be at work as the two systems resemble each other in post-positive modification structure.
In natural languages, people use adjectives to modify nouns, adverbs to modify verbs. Evidently, by doing so one can narrow down the possible meanings carried by one’s utterance and limit the possible alternative interpretations. In languages that don’t have adjectives, verbs are attached to serve the equivalent semantic function. Thus, from a certain point of view, verbs can be seen as modifiers of subjects, and objects can be seen as modifiers of verbs in a SVO structure. For instance, in the phrase: ‘the man ran’, the verb ‘ran’ denotes a temporal action of ‘the man’, which limits the status of ‘the man’. In the phrase: ‘the baby ate an apple’, ‘an apple’ is the object of ‘ate’ and it limits the possible comestible or non-comestible item which ‘the baby’ ate. It modifies the verb ‘ate’. Grammarians make clear-cuts of sequential utterances by their understanding of them, nevertheless, clear-cut categories do not exist in languages per se. Modifications appear in sequence. In languages such as Modern English and Modern Mandarin, in which post-positive adjectives are very rare the case, nouns can be considered as modifiers of adjectives. For example, in the phrase a ‘red hat’, ‘hat’ could be seen as determining what is ‘red’. The order of subjects, verbs and objects is much like the order of adjectives, which is established on customary habits.
In film language, there are also ubiquitous examples to demonstrate post-positive syntagmatic modifications that come in sequence. Actions that carry specific information can be staged in sequence with the main action in a shot to modify the main action. Likewise, shots can be joined together to form a sentence-like sequence. Furthermore, some montage sequences demonstrate phenomena comparable to duality in linguistics. For example, in the Kuleshov Experiment, the expressionless face of Ivan Mozzhukhin was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl, a little girl’s coffin).
2.3.1 Adjectival Modification
In natural languages, one way of limiting meaning is to use adjectives and adjectival phrases, for example, in the French phrase: ‘escarpement rocheux’, the word ‘rocheux’ attach after ‘escarpement’ indicates that the cliff is deep. In film language, one telling example would be the use of a sudden jump from a normal shot to an extreme long shot as to indicate that the subject is inferior in size compared to its surroundings or enemy. In the animated feature film “Finding Nemo”, there is a scene of Nemo’s first day to school and he accidentally came to the edge of a cliff with his new friends. The creators of the film chose to attach an extreme long shot immediately after the shot in which Nemo and his friends saw the cliff.
2.3.2 Adverbial Modification
Another way of limiting meaning in natural languages is to use adverbs and adverbial phrases, for instance, in the phrase: ‘the car drove so fast that it evaded the police radar’, ‘so fast that it evaded the police radar’ serves as an adverb an denotes how fast the car went. Likewise, in film language, shots and actions following certain shots and actions serve as adverbs. In the film Taxi 3, for example, there is a scene when Daniel’s taxi went pass a toll booth and blew the newspaper off the toll collector’s hands. A shot of Daniel racing through the toll station is followed immediately by a shot showing the newspaper falling from the toll collector’s hands.
2.4 Developing Pattern
Variations in language pattern exist as a matter of fact in both natural languages and film language. Synchronically and diachronically, the parole of language change in every instance of speech acts. However, it is not easy to tell which direction is correct and which is wrong. By the same token, the pattern of film language differs in time and space too. As a matter of fact, natural languages and visual languages both evolve over time.
2.4.1 Deconstruction of Meaning
Both natural languages and film language can be broken down into small units of meaning. The ‘size’ of these units varies greatly; however, both natural languages and film language exhibits a tendency of chopping meaning units into finer pieces over time.
Ancient languages tend to be of rather rough units, highly inflected, which means that certain meaning have not yet been cut down into finer units to function independently and be able to combine and detach freely. However, there are advantages with multiple meaning fused together. For instance, with a greater load of information in each meaning block, people can speed up communication. Some words fall out of use because what they denote is decreasing in significance. For example, the Classical Chinese character ‘駒’, which means ‘colt’, is becoming increasingly archaic especially when used alone while the Contemporary Vernacular Chinese word ‘小马驹’ , which means ‘little horse colt’, or simply ‘小马’, literally ‘small horse’, now functions in its place. Likewise, a great number of characters denoting different horses cease to be active in Contemporary Vernacular Chinese. Take Classical Latin as another example, ‘PORTARE, PORTABO, PORTABVNT, AVDIRE, AVDIAM and AVDIENT’ denote ‘to carry, I will carry, they will carry, to hear, I will hear and they will hear’ respectively. In Modern English, there are clear reoccurrences of certain elements whereas in Classical Latin there are not. Evidently, with the semantic components deconstructed as in Modern English, free combinations of words makes the system, the so called ‘grammar’, much simpler and more economic. The deconstruction of meaning makes the organization of an utterance more like building architectures with bricks instead of carving grottoes out of rocky mountains. Furthermore, the deconstruction of meaning blocks makes communication more precise and accurate. In Modern English, people often resort to the break-down of intransitive verbs into transitive verbs in order to make an utterance more clear and precise, for instance, switching from ‘I ate’ to ‘I ate apples’.
The deconstruction of meaning in visual languages can be found throughout history. Early civilizations often use lines to denote complex spatial relations and tend to assign a particular color to every object. In time, man discovered that complex spatial relations can be expressed more easily via fine gradations of shade and that the spectrum of colors can be rendered simply by mixing a few key colors and eventually invented the RGB system refining the mosaic system. The advent of film presented a promising future for visual languages, however, early cinematographer did not know how to cut down what’s in front of them and thus wasted much of film’s potential. The very first footages in film history like Louis Roundhay Garden Scene and Workers Leaving the Lumiére Factory are generally full size single shots. As film and animation developed, filmmakers learned to crop scenes and cut shots. The Soviet filmmakers even elaborated the understanding of editing into the Soviet montage theory. Nowadays, cropping and editing both have become an indispensable part of film language. An increasing number of close-ups is now replacing full-shots. Since a film can be cut into scenes and scenes into shots, the participants of a dialogue can be shot a year apart and be artificially put together by editing. Spatial and temporal continuity can be constructed and achieved through ‘the grammar’ of film language. As natural languages, the deconstruction of meaning blocks makes expressions more precise and accurate. For instance, although a punch in the nose can be filmed in a single shot, filmmakers often divide it into two shots, with the second shot showing the impact of the punch. The second shot could be showing the person being hit bleeding and flying away, or it could be showing the person standing still and looking real tough.
The deconstruction of information segments allows more freedom and accuracy in information conveyance in that it is mentally more economic to coin combinations whenever needed and more effective to use precise modification units.
2.4.2 Evolution through Metabolism
Never, has there been a consensus of opinion as to how languages change. Nonetheless, it may be interpreted as ever metabolizing and evolving. The eagerness to be better drives humanity to have new thoughts, to make new discoveries, design new models of this world and coin new expressions. Thus, new expressions are ever being produced and experimented; however, only the fittest can manage to survive.
In the evolution of natural languages, for instance, in the early days of Vernacular Chinese, new vocabulary emerged rapidly with the introduction of new thoughts and technology. Some of the new vocabulary eventually entered the Contemporary Chinese lexicon and some did not. For example, the transliteration: ‘德律风’ for telephone, which carries no specific meaning was introduced by Shanghai Pidgin English and is now outlasted by the Sino-Japanese free translation ‘电话’ meaning ‘electronic speech’. At the same time, traditional vocabulary faced the fate of being eliminated and finally washed away like ‘先生’ in the sense of ‘teacher’.
In film language, there has also been a similar process. To illustrate new ideas, filmmakers drain their heads to bring up fresh pictures and experiences. For instance, in the film The Matrix, the filmmakers introduced a new technique which they named it ‘Bullet Time’, by which they created the sequence of Neo dodging bullets. By the same token, elimination of old expressions exists in film language as well. In the early days of cinema, for example, the technique of irising in and out is adopted to signify the beginning or ending of a film; however, this device is almost extinct in modern cinema.
2.5 Dependence on Context
In natural conversations, people draw meaning not only from what’s encoded into the language, but also from context. In film sequences, shots also rely on context for meaning. In fact, filmmakers often make use of context to make the impression of someone being shot or hit. For instance, in the prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, after Galadriel’s line: ‘Victory was near, but the power of the Ring could not be undone’, Sauron appears and wreaks havoc, sending warriors flying across the field; however, most shots do not show men and elves being directly hit by Sauron’s mace. From most of the shots alone, one can only tell that Sauron is wielding a mace or that something is ‘flying’. Sauron’s mace could be aiming anything and the warriors could be thrown by anything. Albeit this ambiguity, once the shots are joined in sequence, the majority of audience have no trouble understanding what the director wishes to convey, they make sense out of otherwise confusing shots.
Chapter 3
Summary
Natural languages and film language resemble each other in respect of their processes of reality, sequential narrative, adjectival modification and developing pattern etc. Nevertheless, common sense informs us that they are in many aspects very different and even heterogeneous.
Firstly, the naissance of natural languages proceeds film language by at least thousands of years. Film language and animation language is still being extemporarily produced, without much convention, whereas natural languages rely heavily on conventional design features. Natural languages extract reality to an extent that it does not resemble what it is meant to represent. Unlike visual languages, which extract reality in a rather rough manner, natural languages codify reality with a limited symbol set by convention which baffles people who are not familiar with the convention from understanding the message. Secondly, though natural languages resort to such use as paralinguistic actions which function on the subconscious mind, visual languages function more on the subconscious mind utilizing elements such as colour and composition, if such a distinction between conscious and subconscious exists.
In the final analysis, although dissimilarities of natural languages and film language abound in many aspects, they share common structural features and might involve similar cognitive processes. Both natural languages and film language function on post-positive modification. As film language matures, it divides its segments into smaller blocks as natural languages do in that it makes information transmission more convenient and effective. They both vary diachronically and evolve through time. Of course the relation between natural languages and film language is in need of further research and analysis.
References
Widdowson, H.G. 1996/2000. Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2000.
Schendl, Herbert. 2001/2003. Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press in 2003.
苏诚忠. 语言的本质 Accessible at http://www.yywzw.com/jt/wgyy/index.html
Wikipedia. Accessible at http://en.wikipedia.org
汉典Accessible at http://www.zdic.net
ii
iii
11
12