Re: Plausibility Check

Nathan Sanders wrote:

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?

PAD means activity of feet, as in English to pad, pad along,
pad pad pad pad ..., DAP means activity of hands, to tap,
French tapper, in my medieval dialect we have Taape for
hand, toeple for to touch.

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

I made predictions. Already last year I discovered that
inverse forms have related meanings, and that some
permutations yield words around the same meme. This
year I used them as predictions, as laws. Laws _are_
predictions, in that they say if A then B. The same for
the new laws of this year. I had LAD for hill, slope,
then I found LAS for mountain, cliff. May the S-word
be the comparative form of the D-word? I assumed so,
and made a prediction: D-words have comparative forms
in S-words. Baldly stating this law and using it I found
plenty of words. My prediction worked.

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

No, it is not. Nobody went systematically for permutations,
they occured as the verbal morphospace was slowly filled
up. First there was PAD for the activity of feet, and the
comparative form PAS for everywhere, the inverse DAP
for manual activity, and SAP for everywhere in a higher
sense that includes the vertical dimension. PAS: here,
south and north of me, east and west of me, five places,
ancient Greek pan pas for all, every, penta for five. SAP:
the ground I stand upon, south and north of me, east
and west of me, under my feet, above my head, seven
places, Latin sapientia for wisdom, experience, knowledge,
knowledge of the world, and plenty similar words for seven,
for example Beersheba means Well of the Divine Seven
(Cyrus H. Gordon).

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

I would say: D-forms are comparated ("gesteigert") in
S-forms, but I came to learn that one can't say so in
English. If the more complicated version using the noun
"comparative form" isn't correct, I might introduce the
simpler new version. Hello, Webster's, here I come ...

Seriously: AD --- toward, comparative form AS --- upward.
LAD --- slope, hill, comparative form LAS --- cliff, mountain.
What term would you propose for the relation between
D-forms and S-forms?

"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.

A mute 'e' can be written or be omitted, you can't derive
it from a law, you must learn the cases. Which form is
correct: departement (as in French and German) or
department? phonems or phonemes? Languages are
teeming with exceptions. You should know that.

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?

Pronounce the word silently, without giving voice, over
and over again, as I told you several times, and you will
see what can happen to Magdalenian DAP: dap dap dap ...

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.

And the human species has undergone a particular period
of time until English evolved. The problem here is the same
as the one in early mathematics and geometry. People are
still claiming that geometry was invented by the Greeks.
A high ranking mathematical genius told me in all earnest
that the history of the square root of 2 began with the
(Greek) continued fraction for 2. The most complicated
first! That silly view comes from believing that everything
must be done our way. But no, there are other ways. Back
in 1979 I found a simple algorithm for approximating the
square root of 2 by means of a number column. Double
the first number of a line and you get the last number,
add two neighboring numbers and you get the number
below:

1 1 2
2 3 4
5 7 10
12 17 24
29 41 58
70 99 140 and so on

In the winter of 1993/94 I found analogous number columns
for approximating the square roots of 3 and 5, in the spring
of 1994 a systematic method for calculating the periphery
of the circle, and between 1996 and 2001 a set of further
additive methods, which allowed me to interpret over 60
problems of the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. Mathematics
can't only be done our way, there have been other ways.
The same applies to language. Not everything must be
done our way. There were other and simpler ways.

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.).

The ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians had the potential
to do everything we can do, but they could not do them in
their time, so they evolved simpler yet clever and ingenious
methods to solve their mathematical and geometrical problems.
The same for language. Everybody can feel at home in the
language of Shakespeare, but only since he lived and worked,
before him English was a simpler language.

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".

When you pronounce words silently you observe what happens
on the physiological level. Do it, and you will recognize the
difference, namely the different pressure. The same applies
to PH and F - which none of you understands, as I found out
in long and hopeless discussions.

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!

Magdalenians used every form of language, body language,
gestures, signs (all hunters give each other signs, obliged
to move silently), their voice, grumblings, yells, humming,
and words.

Reading is not speaking.

You can pronounce words without giving voice. Do it instead
of writing about it. Remember the Monty Python scetch
Nudge nudge: What's it like? You can't tell anybody how it
feels, you have to do it yourself.

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

I never said biology and linguistics are identical. I say
that language is a basic feature of life, and I hope to
understand more on language via biological evolution,
whereas if we could find the mechanisms of stasis
in language (how words are kept in place) we may learn
about the mysterious yet powerful mechanisms of stasis
in biology.

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

Sez you.

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

I see that you follow Darwin's model of gradual evolution.
I don't follow that model, I prefer the one by Nils Eldrege and
Stephen Jay Gould, and others before them. A new species
can arise in a relatively short period of time (punctuation of
the equilibrium) and then persist basically unchanged for eons
(stasis).

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.

Language never emerged for the first time, in my opinion
it is a basic feature of life. Homo erectus has been humming,
Neanderthals have been yodeling. Homo sapiens sapiens
of the Middle Stone Age in South Africa, Blombos cave,
75,000 BP, had a fully developed language according to
Christopher Henshilwood (look up his excellent website).
Any idea how that language worked? Would you assume
that it was close to German, with very longs words such as
Vierwaldstaetterseedampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaens-
muetzengoldsternglanz?

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.

Bacteria language is not primitive. We still use it. It works
most powerful. If you fall in love with someone you are using
language on the level of bacteria, of exchanging chemical
substances.

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

Language is the car, communication is the traffic.

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

No, baby talk is still present in adult talk, as early Rome
is still present in modern Rome.

No, no, no, and no.

Some two years ago, as I recall, Jacques Guy was upset
by an article in Science (or was it Nature?) that said the
DNA may be considered a form of language with as grammar
of its own. I found this idea very appealing. And I prefer the
practical approach to language I find in biology.

Your definition is flawed (see below).

Point out what is wrong with my definition of language.
You are just describing some aspects of modern language,
and on this basis you reject my general definition. The flaw
is in your logic, as you may recognize when I apply the
same to life: Life means to grow up in a familiy, go to school,
then to work, to the pub on Friday evening, to Church on
Sunday morning --- now do bacteria go to school, work, pub
and Church? No, no, no, and no, therefore bacteria don't live ...

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

Pater Rupert Ruhstaller, he gave me private lessons
in his monastery cell, he showed and explained me his
revolutionary grammar that relies on what he calls
functors and arguments, and which can be visualized
by means of budding circles - completely different from
all we learned in school. As I realized only much later,
his private lessons gave me the courage to look at
things from different angles. I thought there is only
one way to look at grammar, the boring way that makes
a billion of young people suffer, but no, there are very
different ways. And also different ways of looking at
language itself.

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.

The Roman letters were _their_ phonemes. You may find
them primitive. Hundred years hence the IFA (International
Fonetic Alfabet) will be considered primitive. Electronic voice
analyzer programs will provide a far better phonetic system.

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.

I explained to several members of sci.lang that the difference
between PH and F lies in the amount of pressure the lower
lip applies to the upper teeth. None of them got it. Neeraj
Mathur was the exception. Why? English, I take it, is not his
mother language.

very = too

My definition of language were too broad if it included,
say, rocks. The laws of gravity affect both human
beings and rocks, but my definition of language does
make a difference between living beings and, say, rocks.

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

Communication is the traffic, language is the vehicule
(or vehicle?). Biochemical reactions can be language
if they serve the purpose of language. Also flowers can
be language if they convey a message, as in the flower
language of old Goethe wrote about: lay a pressed flower
into a letter, it will tell your lover what you are feeling
(one flower means this, another flower something else).

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.

Phonology is not the same as words. A baby has a rich
phonology even before he or she can pronounce a word.

What work have they done on *language* specifically?

Stephen Jay Gould corrects Darwin's model of evolution
(The Structure of Evolutionary Theory), Richard Dawkins
has a fresh approach to language in his Selfish Gene
(second edition), Gary Marcus tells you that language
isn't just processed by the Broca and Wernicke center.

(This paragraph serves also as reply to Peter T. Daniels.)

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:

As language, in my opinion, is a basic feature of life,
the similarities don't just occur on the surface. There
are deep similarities, I feel and believe.

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

How do language changes occur? they are the consequence
of some impact from the outer world. Such impacts also
have consequences for living beings, and, in the long run,
for evolution.

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

Within a couple of decades our climate changed considerably,
in the hot summer of 2003 our glaciers, of which we are so
proud, lost one eight of their volume - in one single summer.
If the heating up goes on that way, we shall loose our glaciers
completely within hundred years. And together with the warming
up of the climate the vegetation in the Swiss Alps is changing,
and dramatically so, typical mountain trees (Fichten, a lovely
sort of firs) disappear, while trees that grow in the south are
climbing the mountain slopes.

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

The changes are relatively small, gradual evolution or
micro-evolution allows adaptations, a famous example
being the white moths of Manchester (?) that turned
into gray moths with the begin of industrialization and
with pollution.

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

It's a popular misunderstanding that learning all about
the categories and classifications of linguistics will
let you understand language. The same in art history.
Learning all the categories of art history won't make
you understand art. Often on the contrary. Young people
join the art history seminary with open eyes, and leave
it blinded, no longer able to simply look at a painting.

Franz Gnaedinger

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: successful language learners -- the little details
    ... > best attack plan for the language is... ... Before I waste my time randomly picking words out of books ... > Supermemo per day until I have learned'em all. ... I carry a pad in my back pocket at all times. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • 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: Plausibility Check
    ... PAD means activity of feet, as in English to pad, pad along, ... predictions, they are not science. ... That's not how language is normally transmitted. ... I see that you follow Darwin's model of gradual evolution. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: what is etymology? (linguistics and biology)
    ... S-words concern the body and soul, Mm denots a humming M ... DOM --- a Magdalenian camp, ancient Greek domos for house, ... what are the possibilities of an early language ... PAD --- activity of feet, to go, pad along, pad pad pad ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Why does language evolution get a pass, with less evidence?
    ... I've seen a lot of creationists who ... very well that they don't all accept language evolution, ... Even IDers go all he way from YECs to the theistic evolution that dare not speak its name. ... evidence for macroscopic changes, ...
    (talk.origins)