Re: Plausibility Check

In article <1155234088.063693.237170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Franz Gnaedinger" <frgn@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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

Related how? Does the inverse systematically yield the polar
opposite? What if the word has no opposite? If PAD means foot, what
the is the predicted meaning of DAP?

If you have no predictions, then you have no science.

2) permutations yield words around the same meme

In what way? Is the semantic relationship between XYZ and XZY
systematically the same for every choice of XYZ?

3) S-words are comparative forms of D-words

You are not using the term "comparative form" correctly. A
comparative form is an adjective form like "faster", used for,
surprisingly enough, comparisons.

4) important words can have lateral associations

"Can" is certainly not systematic. Either something happens, or it
does not. If it can, but need not, then you need to establish the
circumstances in which it does and in which it doesn't. Otherwise,
it's not predictive, it's not systematic, and it's not science.

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.

So all descendant forms of your Magdalenian word PAD will always have
the vowel A in them? How then do you explain the /e/ in the Greek
root ped?

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.

Nonsense (even beyond the idea that all humans speak English!). By
your logic, since human babies are human, they should be able to
sexually reproduce. This is something that they are capable of only
after they have undergone a particular period of development. Just
like with language.

Human babies have the potential to do everything adult humans can do,
but they cannot do them at birth, and some of them can't be done until
years later (walking, reproducing, using fully formed language, etc.).

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,

You have not answered the question. If your Magdalenians were
pronouncing things "without voice", then how did they distinguish D
from T? PAD and PAT sound identical "without voice".

And of course, no human language is purely voiceless, so you've added

I should rephrase this as "no spoken human language", since sign
languages obviously have no voicing, but it's clear from context that
you aren't proposing that Magdalenians used sign language!

yet another baseless assumption to your fantasy, further removing it
from the reality of actual language.

Mute people can't read?

Reading is not speaking.

Linguistics is not biology.

Physics ain't mathematics, yet both go along.

"Going along" is very different from "being identical".

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

More obfuscatory meaningless twaddle that doesn't answer the question.
Etymology is not meaning.

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.

Irrelevant. Semantic shifts affect language in every type of culture.

You can assume it, but it's wrong.

You are free top assume that early language began with
long words instead of short ones.

Magdalenian would not be the beginning of early language. You're
looking at something 10-20K years ago, at least a hundred thousand
years after language emerged for the first time.

You are also free to
assume that life began with brontosaurus and evolved
to bacteria.

Are you saying that Magdalenians were bacteria? If not, your analogy
is pointless. They were humans, ergo their language would have been a
human language, not some primitive bacterial language.

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.

Communication is not language (though language is a type of
communication). Learn what the word "subset" means.

Ever listened to the toddler's parents?

Yes.

Then you should know that the way parents speak to each other is
completely different from baby talk.

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.

apes got
language, plants got language, bacteria got language,
cells in a living tissue got language

No, no, no, and no.

- springs all from
my definition of language from 1974/75 (see below).

Your definition is flawed (see below).

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.

Who? Either he did a terrible job, or you were a poor student.

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, they are not. There are more phonemes in Latin than represented
by the alphabet, and there are some phonemes with multiple spellings.
It is not a one-to-one mapping, which is why linguists generally avoid
using spelling to talk about phonemes.

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,

No, we don't. PH is a digraph, and F is a single letter. P and F may
be vaguely similar in shape, but the closed loop of the P and the
addition of H make PH and F very easy to distinguish.

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,

very = too

so that it encompasses all
of language.

And all of communication, all biochemical reactions, every physical
movement by a living organism, etc.

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.),

Human children do not talk about abstract concepts for a while into
their development, especially hypotheticals, counterfactuals,
impossibility, and related concepts.

By they time they do, their phonology has gone well beyond
one-syllable words.

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.

What work have they done on *language* specifically?

Biological evolution is not the correct model for language change,
despite some surface similarities. Here are just a few ways in which
they are different:

* target: language change can affect a single individual over the
course of their life, while evolution only affects descendants

* time scale: 1000 years of language change results in something
completely new, while 1000 years of evolution isn't even noticeable

* impetus: both can be stimulated by random physical factors, but
language can also be affected by social and mental factors

Get an idea of cutting-edge biology and you
will acquire a broader understanding of language.

Get an idea of basic linguistics and you will acquire an actual
understanding of language.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... Glossary of the new Magdalenian words, part 3 DOM SOMm, ... DOM --- a Magdalenian camp, ancient Greek domos for house, ... what are the possibilities of an early language ... and further permutations yield words ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... LOG GOL GLO OLG ... Typical for Magdalenian are words of three letters, ... pleasing word claimed a place in English language. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... ZAI MAI TAI PhAI KhAI, and their permutations, all in all ... for life, German sein for to be, Sein for existence, Latin ... DOM --- a Magdalenian camp, ancient Greek domos for house, ... what are the possibilities of an early language ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... what are the possibilities of an early language ... Please pronounce my Magdalenian words as if in Latin, ... and further permutations yield words ... PAD --- activity of feet, to go, pad along, pad pad pad ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: "par coeur" origin
    ... Peter T. Daniels wrote: ... and all the 64 possible permutations from ... A genetic language able to produce a human being ... also fine for Magdalenian. ...
    (sci.lang)