streaming consciousness…

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  hardie karges 7:16 am on November 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: emotion ( 6 ), language ( 172 ), tonality ( 2 )   

  Do tonal languages yield tonal emotions? 

  This would be the true deciding factor in the Whorf/Sapirian vs. Chomsky debate, if such things could indeed be measured. Why do polytonal primary languages yield to such monotonal secondary languages? When tone becomes a function of grammar, it ceases to be a function of emotional expression. Asians in general speak the most boring English imaginable, while Farangs speaking Thai butcher tones with a ball-peen hammer when they can speak them at all. To me tones seem a lousy way to build a language, or maybe just a lazy way. Thais seem to prefer to use as few syllables as possible most of the time, yet fill their speech with euphonic couplets analogous to “creepy-crawly”, “razzle-dazzle”, etc. whenever possible. In fact, pronunciation, including tone, is extremely precise at the risk of miscomprehension, while meaning tends to be rather vague even when grammar-perfect. Tonality has never been successfully reconstructed in any proto-language, indicating that it is a patchwork system at best. Thai and Lao, in fact, differ greatly in tone, even though they are essentially the same language and mutually comprehensible with only minor modifications. Nevertheless, tonal languages are widespread throughout the world, and not only in Chinese-related cultures. All African Bantu languages are tonal except one, the most widespread one, Swahili. That modern Mandarin, the most widely spoken language in the world, is simpler than the more archaic Cantonese, like English and German, seems to confirm that languages seem to simplify themselves in proportion to the spread of their use.

   

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  hardie karges 3:27 am on November 14, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 )   

  If only it were possible to view the evolution of language 

  in compressed actual time, that would truly be one of the greatest stories ever told. Unfortunately, language leaves no traces in DNA, or does it? Conversely, language is itself like the DNA of culture, mutating and multiplying, giving rise to new offspring in a way almost spookily more than analogous. Sounds themselves seem more indigenous and racially significant, language being the far-ranging conqueror capable of crossing borders and subduing the weak, whether linguistically or militarily. From whatever source primordial language emerged, they have multiplied and divided to the point that any return to uniligualism is unlikely, in spite of English’s smart-ass lure, despite extreme Mandarin conservatism.
   
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  hardie karges 10:22 am on November 13, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: instinct, society ( 5 )   

  Instinct is a rather vague concept, 

  it universally accepted that somehow animals are somehow born with certain habits, without explaining in the least how this actually happens. Ants crawl on power lines without the slightest trace of self-consciousness or irony, following the paths of their ancestors that never knew house nor barn, much less transformers nor transformation. Ants exhibit a degree of complexity and social organization unknown to humans except in possibly some of the more densely populated areas of China, each carrying more than its own weight, yet readily joining efforts with others when necessary, following complex paths that frequently involve short cuts through my house. They do all this with obviously extremely limited mental capacity, and I doubt seriously that the species would go extinct if suddenly all the power lines in the world were to disappear. I think they’d adapt. I think they’d make new plans, with or without legalistic sanctions for enforcement. I think they’d update old plans for new situations. I think they’d elect new officers and keep right on going into the future.

   
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  hardie karges 3:45 am on November 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 ), thought ( 15 )   

  Much has also been made of the inherent propensities for language 

  which seem to be specific only to humans, without ever stating exactly what these properties are, much less how they are transmitted. I’d probably estimate that language is more of an invention that an inheritance, but that something is likely inherited that underlies language, probably the logic or causality of it. In Asian languages ‘here’ and ‘now’ are frequently variations of the same word, sound, morpheme, phoneme, whatever, as are ‘then’ and ‘there’, so maybe that sort of equivalence and general space-time coordination is inherent. Maybe the sentence structure of subject-verb-object is the ‘innate idea’ of language that’s inherited, regardless of how long it’s taken some languages to make that explicit. The central idea of an ‘I’ acting on ‘them’ is easily intuited, but the idea of a ‘they’ acting on ‘them’, rather than a ‘them’ somehow attracting the attentions of another, may be equally inherent, at least in this expansive phase of the Big Bang universe. During the Big Squeeze, if everything we experience happens all over again except in reverse order, then logic may indeed be similarly reversed, and guns may indeed suck the bullets out of bodies, with no apparent violation of causality. Nevertheless, all this may very well be the first thing a child learns in this world, even before speech, but not inherited. Language is an invention. Though perhaps bound to happen, hominids were nevertheless without it for most of their history, as they proceeded to tame fire, use tools, and bury their dead.

   
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  hardie karges 7:55 am on November 9, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: EVOLUTION ( 21 ), language ( 172 ), thought ( 15 )   

  The history of language is a family tree that maybe began with a single stalk. 

  They say that 5% of any two languages will show similarities, as if that proves the insignificance of any similarities when in fact it may show just the opposite. They may well have all derived from just a very few, maybe just one. Don’t be surprised if that evolution parallels the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens themselves, if not directly, then by analogy. Whether there is any direct connection between language and DNA or not, they seem to function similarly in how they evolve over time. Much is made of the fact that homos are the only species that can speak, then going into elaborate explanations of the human vocal chords having worked their way deep into the throat for proper enunciation of modern languages. All this seems a bit anthropocentric to me, diminishing if not outright ignoring or rejecting the fact that communication can be equally, if not more, effective in other ways. If anything, humans’ own writing systems are more articulate than the speech they represent, but which may never actually be vocalized, particularly in the case of mathematical equations. Beyond the human sphere, other animals convey rather complex information, which, while it cannot be properly regarded as speech, is certainly a form of communication, i.e. transfer of information.

   
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  hardie karges 5:28 am on November 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 ), thought ( 15 )   

  The ‘mentalese’ the Chomskyans are looking for, is likely thought itself. 

  That’s not language properly speaking, and applies to lower animals, as well. Once we have language, we proceed to think in it, but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t think without it. The idea that, since all languages are so similar, and since all children learn them so easily, then there must be an underlying ‘mental language’, makes a few non-provable conclusions based on a few non-provable assumptions, though it may fall short of outright begging the question. For one thing, though I love kids, their linguistic prowess is not impressive to me. Think what you might do if you had one-on-one instruction every day for four or five years with literally nothing else to occupy your mind and everything to gain for your efforts. Secondly, since when are all languages so similar? They may indeed all be coming closer together whether because of international English or the simple logic and proven effectiveness of S-V-O word order, but that is recent and tentative. There is a much longer history of languages categorized as synthetic/analytical, inflected, or agglutinative. There may be an even earlier period when languages were more similar. Nevertheless, if languages are indeed similar, there may be an even better reason for the phenomenon. They may all derive ultimately from the same parent language before they literally went separate ways.

   
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  hardie karges 4:00 am on November 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 ), thought ( 15 )   

  The only thing universal to all languages 

  are symbols corresponding to things and actions, nouns and verbs utilizing consonants and vowels, whether explicit or implicit, in some prescribed order based on internal rules of logic. The only thing universal to all thought, human or not, linguistic or not, would seem to be things and actions ordered by chronology, and therefore tentative causality, Pavlovian stimulus-response-reward mechanisms. The act of perception itself must proceed through many phases from inception through its subsequent development, depending on the complexity of the organism being discussed, analogous to the capabilities of a nerve ending itself: pain, pressure, hot, and cold at the local level. In complex multi-celled organisms, this quickly expands into sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, a whole world of perception. When this swirl becomes categorized into actions and things, we cross over into thought, replete with chronology and causality. Once we abstract that thought with symbols, we have language. So mankind proceeds, from infant to sage, from past to present, from perception to thought to language.

   
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  hardie karges 5:41 am on November 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: language ( 172 ), thought ( 15 )   

  Causality seems to be intrinsic to human thought and by extension, language. 

  
  This would follow directly from chronology, the ordering of events by order of their appearance. The ‘mentalese’ language that underlies all formal language that Chomsky and his disciples are looking for is probably mathematical, as in logic, inference, the basic assumption that if one event precedes another directly and seamlessly, then it is likely the cause. While this may not be language in the strict sense, nor even always accurate, it may nevertheless underlie it at any level beyond the simple naming of objects. S-V-O word order may derive from this at the earliest stages of consciousness, empty minds hungry to be fed, form looking for content beyond the mother’s breast. But I doubt it. That ‘s merely our arrogance, assuming we’ve always been the rational animal, full of logic and reckoning. To assume that an object was acted upon by unknown actors with unclear antecedents for unknown causes would be to live in a world of magic and superstition, religion and showmanship. Bingo. Welcome to America, bastion of science and modern technology. Even more so the rest of the world, where the passive reflexivity heretofore described is intrinsic to much spoken language, especially in the Spanish of Latin America. Go figure. When combined with subjunctive moods and conditional aspects, you might even forget your own primacy in the equation, which is what a sentence is. In many countries the subject of a sentence can even be understood or assumed, not indicated or reiterated, and therefore weakened, a verb and object sufficing for comprehension.

   
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  hardie karges 11:25 am on November 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), language ( 172 )   

  Psycholinguistics vs. socio-linguistics, ultimately rests on one question: 

  could people think without language? Unfortunately there’s no way to test the proposition, because, even if you could locate people who’ve never had language, how would you document their thought processes without language? Okay, so the logic is circular and forms a tautology, so more importantly, without begging the question of ‘thought’ itself: Is intelligence a function of language? Certainly you can’t penalize bears for improper vocal chords anymore than you can punish dolphins for lack of an opposable thumb, so you look for behavior that might indicate abstract thought regardless of any symbols that might suggest language. A ‘mental’ language should require no symbols; it is pure code. I see much behavior that promotes survival, but not much more than that. Furthermore, back to the original question, any animal capable of sound is capable of language, whether it be clicks or whistles, giggles or gurgles; the more complex, the better. I don’t see it, any more than I see primitive tribes building cities. Furthermore, there seems to be a clear correlation between complexity of language and complexity of civilization. Bird’s songs and bees’ dances aren’t language. Traveling long distances does not count as intelligence. All animals do that, for whatever reason, most likely to get to the other side. If there is no better measure of intelligence, then let it be complexity, in behavior and symbolism. Still other questions arise from the issue: Would it occur to people to invent language if they hadn’t already been taught it? Why do children learn language so easily and so fast, which is the psycholinguist’s ace in the hole? Answer: They don’t. I have a better question: Why do most adults learn so slowly?

   
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  hardie karges 1:57 pm on November 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history ( 42 ), language ( 172 ), love ( 49 )   

  We view the past with a microscope from the present, 

  city fuckers viewing the ‘primitives’ with disdain, as though our fat bellies and haute coiffures were the essence of civilization. Even worse would be to glorify the primmies, of course, as though their stargazing was somehow superior to Hubble’s simply on principle. At one point, it wasn’t even clear that the ‘Indians’ were real people, and that chimpanzees weren’t. Things that just seem so patently obvious now weren’t necessarily obvious at all in the past. It wasn’t even obvious that men should seek sexual pleasure in the arms of their wives until the Greeks experimented long and hard, and played both sides of the fence. Of course then the Romans cultivated the art. They’re so romantic. The subject-verb-object word order of modern English and all analytic, isolating languages is a system that is found to work, not something innate or obvious. In a mysterious world of supernatural events, things are acted upon without clear antecedents, yielding an O-V-S order with no apologies. If the S-V-O word order was obvious to the Chinese, then that may be as much to their credit as, and ultimately related to, movable print, paper, and sweet-and-sour pork. They never had a zero, of course, nor positional notation, until they got it from the Hindus via the Arabs just like the rest of us, all except for the Mayas, that is. The Mayas apparently even had something else that very few great civilizations ever had: an appreciation of great ceremonial centers as places to congregate and corresponding disdain for large cities as places to live. Apparently it doesn’t occur to most modern historians that mega-cities are not only not the archetype of civilization, but are downright unhealthy.