Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)
From: Comm (tjsrno_at_spampost.com)
Date: 03/11/05
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Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:49:28 GMT
<phippsmartin@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1110413276.695879.91400@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Richard Herring wrote:
>> In message
> <nsanders.DIE.SPAM-BFA7F7.11342409032005@news.verizon.net>,
>> Nathan Sanders <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@wso.williams.edu> writes
>>
>> [...]
>> >
>> >I wish physicists had to deal with innumerable kooks arguing from
>> >their authority as physical beings:
>>
>> You think they don't? Just step next door to sci.physics :-(
>
> You don't have to go that far. Really. Layman CAN make contributions
> to the humanities: does anybody argue that Comm's point that Nomadic
> people develop an impressive ability to pick up languages (probably
> because they get exposed to different languages at a young age) was not
> a good one and relevent to the discussion that was taking place? But
> her analogies making reference to physics are just... embarrassing.
> (I'm trying to picture how someone can "put" phonons in a box. Maybe
> with a set of speakers.)
Lasers. You are denying that photons can occupy the same space at the same
time? Are you? Electrons can't. Nothing else can - except phonons. And I
don't mean radio waves, btw. I mean plain old sound.
I question their criteria for declaring what is or is not related. Yeah,
language relatedness goes a lot like evolutionary relatedness - they make
trees showing origin languages, split offs, etc. Common origin - means
related. IE would be the root of the tree for all IE languages. English
and German branch off away from each other more recently than both those
language types branched away from Romance languages' common root. That is
what they mean. Look at a language tree. I question the whole criteria -
and yeah, it's just a paradigm. The problem is, language is not the same as
evolution (biological) at all. We can't mix our DNA with chimps. They make
language trees to show what they mean by 'related' - two languages with a
common source. Branches.
> Just speaking for physicists, I would say that it is ultimately our own
> fault if laymen don't understand us. People in education do try to get
> people to understand: that's the job. So concepts have to be explained
> in the simplest yet clearest terms possible. If we used the words
> "sun" and "moon" to refer to elementary particles and people thought we
> were taking about astronomy then who would be at fault? Yep, us. As
> far as I know, there has never been ANY physicist who has EVER
> criticized a layman for not understanding terminology in physics. That
> would be both rude and ignorant. That's the point I was trying to make
> before.
>
> Martin
>
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