Re: Plausibility Check


Nathan Sanders wrote:

So are you asserting that the inverse always yields the opposite
meaning? If not, then you have no prediction.

Did I say opposite meanings? No, I said related meanings.
Inverse forms have related meanings.

A discovery is not a prediction.

When a discovery leads to a scientific law, then it is
a prediction, since a scientific law says that if A then B.

What's the difference between "related meanings" and "around the same
meme"?

Only a difference in scale. Related meanings are closer
than meanings around the same meme, the latter are
more loose relations, but still close enough.

Yes they are. But you don't have laws. Rather, you have unstable
tendencies.

I formulated my four laws, and then I used them mining
words. They are as good as laws in linguistics can be.

Then your "laws" are not laws. They are not systematic, they make no
predictions, they are not science. They are random coincidences, with
your mind imposing a (partial) pattern on chaos.

They are laws, I used them to make predictions,
I used them for mining 350 Magdalenian words,
the largest group of DAI, comparative form SAI,
and lateral associations, yielded a cluster of 72 words.

Spelling is not science.

You can't tell me a law that says when a mute e is written
and when it is omitted. A lot of contingency here, no law.

When you make actual predictions, you can determine what is and is not
an exception. From there, you can revise the theory to account for
the exceptions.

But you don't even bother with any of that pesky scientific method
stuff. Logic and rigor are hard! And they get in the way of your
fantasy.

So tell me a logic law by which I can decide whether
a mute e is written or omitted. And tell me a law from
which I can deduce whether the negative form is given
as in- or as un-. In Latin it's easy, always in-, but in
English it's not easy, you have to learn and remember
every case. No general law.

That's not how language is normally transmitted.

I told you about my trick of silencing the phonetic
system in order to allow words to shift.

I don't want to see what "can" happen. I want to know what your
"laws" are predicting precisely for when Magdalenian A comes out as
/e/ in Greek.

You don't try, but you judge it. A popular method
in sci.lang. And your way of splitting up my replies
into ever tinier morsels, thus obliging me to write
ever longer replies, is a drag. Concentrate yourself
on one single question. You consider me a kook.
I told you all how to handle a kook. Ask him (or her)
for one single valid idea, not for 30 valid ideas, just
for one (1) single valid idea. Or else pick out the
worst he (or she) says and focus on that point.

Whispering is not reading.

You have a serious problem with English vocabulary!

Not whispering! When you wisper words you give voice,
a minimum of air streams along the vocal strings, the
phonetic system sets in and keeps the words in place.
What I ask you to do is pronouncing the words silently,
without giving voice, not even whispering, and observing
what happens on the physiological level.

These two statements are in contradiction.

You are a member of sci.lang, but you are not sci.lang.

I wouldn't assume their words were short or long. Unlike you, I don't
make unwarranted assumptions about ancient word lengths. Human
languages can have short words (Chinese), and they can have long words
(Finnish).

Living beings can be small (bacteria) or large (elephants),
nevertheless we can assume - and can conclude from
paleontological evidence - that tiny entities stood at the
begin of life on earth.

Chemistry is not linguistics.

The exchange of chemical substances in order to convey
a message certainly has to do with language and is part
of linguistics in a broader sense. I don't care about your
understanding of linguistics, I prefer the understanding
of language I find in biology.

Sounds like some primitive, needlessly graphical, version of
dependency grammar. So? It's been done, and better.

Dependency grammar? Waz dat? Structuralistic grammar
would be more to the point, at least a philologist told me
that's the proper name for his grammar. I myself don't
care at all about such names and classerfications.

Snipping a lot. I can't reply to absurdly increasing
numbers of lines. Concentrate yourself on one single
point, the one you find worst.

From Gary Marcus's own webpage:

"Why is that humans can acquire language when no other species can?"
<http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/>:

From recent articles by Gary Marcus:

"No animal communication system comes close to human language in its
power, and by most accounts language has been on the planet for less
than half a million years..."
<http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/marcusArticles/marcus%202006%20nyt.pdf>

"Human language seems to be unique in the natural world. Non-human
communication is predominantly restricted to simple messages such as
alarm calls and identification signals, with little in the way of
complex structure. By contrast, the average human has access to a
vocabulary of tens of thousands of words and can, guided by an
intricate set of structural rules, assemble them into a potentially
infinite number of meaningful sentences, referring not only to the
here and now, but also to the past, the future and the abstract."
<http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gary/marcusArticles/Fisher%20Marcus%202006.pd
f>

This is someone who has a proper definition of language. If you like
his work so much, I don't understand why your definition is so flawed.
You would do well to actually read what he writes, rather than ignore
him.

Yes, I like his work very much, for he paints a different
picture than Richard Dawkins, the gloomy aspect of
genetics is gone, with Gary Marcus we come to learn
that genes are providers of rich posibilities. No need
to agree on everything he says. I would reformulate
the above passages. Language reached a very high
level with human beings. Why is that? Well, I can tell
you: ...

Opinion is not science or fact.

Every scientist bases his or her work on opinions,
intuitions, and beliefs.

Feeling and belief are not science or fact.

Every scientist bases his or her work on opinions,
intuitions, and beliefs.

Not generally. Language change is largely a purely internal process,
triggered by properties of the language itself and of language in
general.

Not every change is evolution, there is also development,
and sometimes they go along, evolution-development,
or evo-devo in bio lingo. Old English used inflections,
heavenum (or so), then inflections were doubled with
prepositions, in heavenum, then the inflections were
given up, while the prepositions prevailed, in heaven.
No evolutionary step required, both possibilities are
present in the human genome and mind, a question of
development, not of evolution. Same goes for the other
points I answered. They concern either development,
or micro-evolutionary processes as in the case of white
and gray moths.

Linguistics is not the study of categories and classifications.

You studied linguistics, I studied language.

Franz Gnaedinger

.

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