21-A. The Language of Uncertainty
Uncertainty spreads through our lives so thoroughly that it dominates our language. Our everyday speech is made up in large part of word like probably, many, soon, great, little. What do these words mean? "Atomic war," declared a recent editorial in the London Times, "is likely to destroy forever the nation that wages it. How exactly are we to understand the word likely? Lacking any standard for estimating the probability, we are left with the judgment of the editorial writer.
Such verbal imprecision is not necessarily to be criticized. Indeed, it has a value just because it allows us to express judgments when a precise quantitative statement is out of the question.
The language of uncertainty has three main categories: (1)words such as probably, possibly, surely, which denote a single subjective probability and are potentially quantifiable; (2)words like many, of-ten, goon, which are also quantifiable but denote not so much a condition of uncertainty as a quantity imprecisely known; (3)words like fat, rich, drunk, which can not be reduced to any accepted number because they are given different values by different people.
We have been trying to pin down by experiments what people mean by these expressions in specific contexts, and how the meanings change with age. For instance, a subject is told "There are many trees in the park” and is asked to say what number the word many mean to him. Or a child is invited to take "some" sweets from a bowl and we then count how many he has taken. We compare the number he takes when he is alone with the number when one or more other children are present and are to take some sweets after him, or with the number he takes when told to give "some” sweets to another child.
First, we find that the number depends, of course, on the items involved. To most people some friends means about five, while .some trees means about twenty. However, unrelated areas sometimes show parallel values. For instance, the language of probability seems to mean about the same thing in predictions about the weather and about politics: the expression is certain to (rain, or be elected) signifies to the average person about a 70 per cent chance; is likely to, about a 60 per cent chance; probably will, about 55 per cent.
Secondly, the size of the population of items influences the value assigned to an expression. Thus, if we. tell a subject to take "a few" or "a lot of" glass bald from a box, he will take more if the box contains a large number of glass balls than if it has a small number. Hut not prolix>rtionately more: if we increase the number of glass balls eight times, the subject takes only half as large a percentage of the total.
Thirdly, there is a marked change with age. Among children between six and fourteen years old, the older the child, the fewer glass balls he will take. But the difference between a lot and a few widens with age. This age effect is so consistent that it might be used as a test of intelligence. In place of a long test we could merely ask the subject to give numerical values to expressions such as nearly always and very rarely in a given context, and then measure his intelligence by the ratio of the number for nearly always to the one for very rarely. We have found that this ration increases systematically from about 2 to 1 for a child of seven to about 20 to 1 for a person twenty-five years old,
【課文譯文】
模糊語言
生活中的模糊現(xiàn)象到處都有，連我們的語言中也不乏模糊的表述。日常語言里很大部分是由諸如“可能”、“許多”、“不久”、“大”、“小”之類的詞語組成。這些詞究竟意味著什么呢?英國倫敦的《泰晤士報》近期發(fā)表一篇社論，稱“原子戰(zhàn)爭有可能永久性地毀滅發(fā)動戰(zhàn)爭的國家。”我們怎樣才能確切地理解“有可能”這個詞語呢?對“可能”的估計(jì)并沒有一個標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，那我們只能聽?wèi){社論作者個人的判斷了。
這類用詞不精確的現(xiàn)象我們并不一定要予以責(zé)備。甚至，它還有一定的價值，因?yàn)樗菰S我們在無法作出一個精確的數(shù)量表述時來表達(dá)判斷。
模糊語言可分為三類：1.表示單一主觀意義上可能性的，可能定量的詞語，諸如“很可能”、“可能”、“肯定”等詞。2.諸如“許多”、“時常”、“不久”等詞語，這類詞語也可以定量，但所表達(dá)的意義與其說是某種不能肯定的狀況，不如說是一個知之不確的數(shù)量。3.諸如“胖”、“富”、“醉”這類詞語，不能精確到人們都認(rèn)同的數(shù)量，只因不同的人有不同的評判標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。
我們一直在試圖通過實(shí)驗(yàn)說明，在各種特定的語言環(huán)境下人們使用上述詞語表達(dá)了什么樣的意義，這些意義怎樣隨年齡的不同而變化。比如：告訴一個被測試者“某公園里有許多樹”，然后問他“許多”一詞在他看來應(yīng)該指多少�；蛘�，讓一個小孩子從碗中取“一些”糖塊，我們可以數(shù)一數(shù)他取了多少。我們比較一下只有他自己在場時取的數(shù)量和他當(dāng)著一個或多個小朋友的面所取的數(shù)量，或者讓他拿“一些”給別的小朋友時所取的數(shù)量。
第一，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，拿的數(shù)量取決于所提供的糖塊的總量。對大多數(shù)人來說，“一些朋友”大約指五個朋友，而“一些樹”指20多棵樹。但類別不相關(guān)的事物有時則呈現(xiàn)出對等的數(shù)值。例如：關(guān)于天氣和政治這兩個不同范疇的預(yù)測，模糊語言的表述有著幾乎相同的意思。如“一定會(下雨，當(dāng)選等)”表示有75%的可能，“很可能”約有60%的可能，而“可能會”則約有55%的可能。
第二，試驗(yàn)物品總量的大小影響到對某一詞語的賦值。如讓一個被測試者從一個盒子里拿“一些”或“許多”玻璃球，如果盒子里裝的多，他就拿的多；裝的少就拿的少。但所取數(shù)量的多少不是按比例增加的：將玻璃球增加七倍，被測試者也只是從總數(shù)中取很小一部分出來 。
第三，隨著年齡不同變化明顯。在6～14的少兒組里，年齡越大，玻璃球反而拿得越少。但“許多”和“一些”兩詞的意義差別隨年齡增長而擴(kuò)大。這種年齡差異是很穩(wěn)定的，因此可以用來作智力測驗(yàn)。我們可以不用作長期測試，只需讓被測試者在特定的語言環(huán)境下對“差不多一直”和“幾乎沒有”兩詞語賦值，然后就可以根據(jù)代表“差不多一直”的數(shù)值與代表“幾乎沒有”的數(shù)值的比值來測量他的智力。我們已發(fā)現(xiàn)，比值是隨著年齡的增大而逐漸增大的；7歲兒童的這一比值為2：1，而25歲成人的比值為20：1。
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