Re: Plausibility Check


Nathan Sanders warped:

Unsurprisingly, you have a warped definition of "answer".

...and of "systematic".

Systematic, in this case, means that I mined over 350
Magdalenian words using my four laws of Magdalenian:

1) inverse forms have related meanings
2) permutations yield words around the same meme
3) S-words are comparative forms of D-words
4) important words can have lateral associations

What does your Magdalenian "letter" A systematically correspond to in
Greek? In Russian? In English?

A is A is A --- everyone can pronounce an A. Apart from
a Nothon Sonders, perhops.

We were still human beings 15,000 years ago. Our brains were the
same. Therefore, the null hypothesis should be that our language
operated the same. Without contradictory evidence, there's no basis
to assume otherwise.

A human baby belongs to the species Homo sapiens sapiens,
ergo a baby speaks English. Or the other way round: if a baby
says goo goo it ain't human. Nothon Sonders logic.

This word indicates that you cannot answer the objection. And the
lack of predictive power is what makes your fantasy a fantasy, and not
a scientific theory. If it isn't scientific, then by definition, it
doesn't belong in sci.lang.

From considering a bacterium one can't tell how a Nothon
Sonders looks like, ergo what are you doing here?

Then why do you have a distinction between voiced and voiceless sounds
(D versus T, for example)? The only distinguishing feature between
them is voicing (vocal cord vibration).

Didn't I explain it? When I pronounce the words silently,
over and over again, they shift, whereas when I voice them
the phonetic system of the brain sets in and keeps the words
in place. There are different areas of the brain involved in the
processing of language. You can trick them out if you know
how. For example there are two areas of the brain that
examine words of the same meaning in different languages:
one of these two areas recognizes that salmon and Lachs
are the same word and so belong together, while the other
recognizes that they don't belong together, for one is English,
the other German. With a little training you can activate one
of those regions and silence the other, either recognizing
words of the same meaning - salmon and Lachs belong
together -, or words of the same language - salmon and
Lachs do not belong together. Pronouncing words without
giving voice is my trick of silencing the area of the brain
that keeps the words in place - I don't know which area
that is, or whether there are several areas involved (more
probably), but my experience tells me that the phonetic
system plays a key role in keeping words in what I call
the verbal morphospace.

And of course, no human language is purely voiceless, so you've added
yet another baseless assumption to your fantasy, further removing it
from the reality of actual language.

Mute people can't read?

Linguistics is not biology.

Physics ain't mathematics, yet both go along.

You didn't *solve* it.

I showed in many posts how words that seem to have
very different meanings are still revolving about the same
meme.

Indeed, semantic shifts could have happened *faster*, since there was
no literacy to help stabilize the language.

What I explained time and again is that the Magdalenian
tribes were organized in a similar way as the later Celts
who were ruled by wandering druids. Their precursors were
wandering shamans represented by stags, and especially
arch-shamans, represented by the giant stag megaceros,
see for example the male and female megaceroi in the
Cougnac cave. The Guyenne was a coherent area, linked
by the many rivers that were represented by the birdman
in the Lascaux cave; later on the rivers of the Eurasian
steppes, and of Upper Mesopotamia.

You can assume it, but it's wrong.

You are free top assume that early language began with
long words instead of short ones. You are also free to
assume that life began with brontosaurus and evolved
to bacteria.

Irrelevant. Adult language and child language are radically
different. Did your Magdalenians have no adults?

A child is very good at language and can perfectly
well communicate with the mother.

Ever listened to the toddler's parents?

Yes. Young mothers are astonished at how quickly they
learn to respond to the goo goo language of their baby;
that early language is still present in ourselves, the
mould (?) around which our adult language is formed.

Chicken or egg. In this case, you aren't going back far enough for
child language to be relevant, because the children you are looking at
always had parents with fully developed adult language.

You'd need to go back 100,000 years or more to even get anywhere close
to a time when human ancestors used a communication system more
primitive than language.

Early Homo sapiens sapiens had language, Neanderthals
used language - with their high and melodic voices they
may have been yodeling -, Homo heidelbergensis and
Homo erectus and Toumai had language, apes got
language, plants got language, bacteria got language,
cells in a living tissue got language - springs all from
my definition of language from 1974/75 (see below).

Once you reach the 21st century, come back to us. An extra hundred or
so years of studying linguistics just might help you out.

By the way, it's "phonemes".

Fonemes.

All sciences do. On Usenet especially, the sciences are plagued by
uneducated kooks peddling fantasies.

The sci.groups are plagued by people who think they
are scientific by narrowing down just anything.

You have gotten the wrong impression of both sci.lang and of linguists
in general.

I got my introduction into linguistics by a linguistic
genius in the late 1960s, for which I am very grateful.

Again, you confuse letters with sounds, something only the stupidest,
or laziest, introductory linguistics students would continue to do
after being corrected numerous times.

A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T U V X Y Z are both
letters and phonemes of the Latin tongue.

No, a property of the English writing system. It has absolutely
nothing to do with the brain.

You Americans have serious problems discerning between PH
and F, you are not able to do so, and it is a consequence of
the neuronal wiring that happens in the first weeks. In the
brain of the newborn the neurons are interlinked at the highest
possible grade, then links are pruned, and this pruning is
the reason why the Japanese can't discern between L and R,
and the English / Americans can't discern between PH and F.

Language is the means of getting help, support
and understanding from those we depend upon
in one way or another --- and every means of
getting help, support and understanding may be
called language, on whatever level of life it occurs

So you can type words such as imbecilic, but you can't
point out what is wrong about my definition of language.

I already have. It's "in the archive".

Here's a summary, since I'm feeling generous and haven't given a
linguistics lecture recently because it's summer: your definition is
far too broad, to the point of uselessness. It's like defining
"chemical reaction" as any interaction of matter, on whatever level
matter can interact. Suddenly, in your world, there is no longer a
distinction between chemistry, mechanics, electromagnetism, biology,
music, engineering, etc.

My definition is very broad, so that it encompasses all
of language. This makes it interesting. An implication is
that language goes along with the level of life. The most
fascinating is the the second part, which allows me to find
and identify language on every level - even among genes,
for genes, according to Richard Dawkins, depend on each
other. As "blind genes" they depend on us, our senses,
our mind, our body, which allows me to see medicine in
the light of communication. The new director of the ETH
Zurich, Ernst Hafen, studies medicine as communication
since 1990; I went for the same over a decade earlier.

Language is a two-way communication system that can convey both
concrete and abstract concepts (past, future, hypotheticals, invisible
or absent referents, impossibility, meta-discourse, etc.), using
productive combinations of identifiable atomic units that almost
exclusively have an arbitrary connection to their meanings.

When a baby says goo goo it conveys a both concrete
and abstract concept (past, future, hypothetical, invisible
or absent referents, impossibility, meta-discourse, etc.),
using productive communications of identifiable atomic
units that almost exclusively have an arbitrary correction
to their meanings --- thanks God the mother doesn't care
about your definition of language and simply gets what
her baby means.

You're Swiss... start with Saussure.

You're American... start with Nils Eldrege, Stephen Jay Gould
(The Structure of Evolutionary Theory), Richard Dawkins,
Gary Marcus. Get an idea of cutting-edge biology and you
will acquire a broader understanding of language.

Franz Gnaedinger

.

Relevant Pages

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