Language is often misunderstood to be a mere subject in thought; Language is that which encompasses all subjects, the power that is thought itself.

I seek approbation, disapprobation.

Welcome, BC (sorry--let me know if the shortening bothers you).
Um--does a mere subject in thought have anything to do with Logwood's mentalese?

Please, call me Kemp. No. What I meant to express is, as some rightfully consider English01 to be a subject in, say, a school, some wrongfully consider Language to be a subject in thought, as science or poetry is. Language, I defend, is not a subject, but the facility that gives thought—that which encompasses all subjects.

You remind me of Benjamin Lee Whorf, whom I still consider a great linguist. He believed language determined thought, as well as thought effecting language. If you get a chance to read "Language, Thought, and Reality," I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

If that is a compliment, I thank you. Former teachers tell me that I am a purist, a pedant, one who deals with language too seriously. I disagree: language cannot be dealt with too seriously; the more diligently one deals with language, the more defined they will become. I will find the book and peruse it.

Words fail me.

a purist? Oh, Dear! you might not be happy here.

this is like a sausage factory! we take language seriously, but we aren't purist.

there are some who shudder at nouns becoming verbs, and verbs becoming nouns.. and others who demonstrate that the particular noun or verb was first misused 200 or 300 years ago (and while it might be abdominable.. it's not new.)

Do we need words to think? i say no. but words and language allow us to share thoughts. newborn infants are able to express displeasure. but how much easier life is when, beignning age 2 or so, they can tell you what is wrong!

welcome Kemp and Nanu*2

Certainly an interesting proposition. Here's a comment on this subject from Language Log. Warning a somewhat longish download, particularly for those of us poor souls with dialup, but well worth the wait.

Speaking of Benjamin Lee Whorf, I mentioned the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on my last thread. I say, while there may be some truth in it, people do have a way of oversimplifying life, or the human mind...

Do you think that all languages embody full communication? Or that all languages combined convery mastery of all concepts?

The problem is that not all concepts translate well from a specific language to another specific language. The words, the grammar, the structure, etc are tools used to convery concepts, but some which are not identified by word (either spoken or written). Within a given language group (ie, English) there are so many variations (color vrs colour, as a simple example) that to identify any single language as all encompassing. I can visualize things which I can not adequately describe to share...Language fails on many levels, no matter the mastery.

well, english as an advantage, its a thief! when there are idea's that we can't encapsulate in a single work, (and others have) we steal their word.

sometimes a word like amuk is softened down in meaning, other words like boondocks keep pretty close to orginal meaning.

Not to mention a bastard!

The meanings of all words are in a continuous state of transition;
words have no ultimate meanings they only serve a function. ~

Language can't fail, Maven, only words can. No word in any language conveys the same exact meaning each time it is used; words can only approximate. And, as for that nebulous word "concept", yes, many concepts can not be expressed easily and succinctly in words other than the originating language, but many concepts are known by many of us that are not capsulized in any language.

Agreed?

_

The use of language fails, perhaps would have been a better phrasing, but that implies that somehow language exists without use, or that communication occurs without language.

Yes "the use of language fails" would have been nice phrasing but using that phrase would have semantically changed the meaning.

And, of course, communication occurs without language; ever say "scat" to a cat?

Anne Curzan made exactly this point in yesterday's chat:

"English is characterized by the massive amount of lexical/word borrowing that speakers have done over the centuries. (Although I think perhaps it is more appropriately called "stealing," as we don't seem to have any plans to return the words!)"

-Just in case she missed it

Never could fathom why Jackie carries a can of that stuff around. Always afraid she is going to get snippy and start flinging it.

Ahem, sir. 'Ware, or I might start snipping you! (wink)

What would it be? Jackie? A haircut or a manicure treatment?

Slovenly Peter
_____________________________________________
(cameo post 2.)

My goodness, Branny! Wherever did you get that picture of Aramis?

Yes.Kind of cute,I think. (You could also use it as an advertising board for the Snipping Shop of course.)
One more for the road; if you click Struwwelpeter Menu on that page, you will get delightful little horror stories for the educational benefit of little children.
Both in German and English.

Language is often misunderstood to be a mere subject in thought - I wonder who seriously defends such a thesis. The purported exclusivity smacks of a "straw man argument", which you then proceed easily to demolish.

"Ho, ho, very funny. Ha ha; it is to laugh."

-Daffy Duck

I concur! Language is a vehicle for communication, and without communication, we are all alone.

Can anyone spot the logical fallacy here?

You mean, we can still talk to ourselves?

The implicit conclusion here is that without language we are all alone, but the unwarranted assumption is that language is the only vehicle for communication.

Then there are some linguists who feel that one of the more important functions of language is to lie.

Then there are some linguists who feel that one of the more important functions of language is to lie.

Any pointers? I'd like to read some of them.

There's even a fellow at UC Santa Cruz, John M. Ellis (here's an interview), who does not think that language has anything to do with communication: see his Language, Thought, and Logic. Just plain weird. I blogged about it (here and there) a while back. I read his Against Deconstruction earlier which made more sense.

It all reads a bit philosophically to me.
Language is to thought as sound is to speech. they are both facets of the same thing. Ultimately......communication.

Yeeeah buddy; and some linguists play fun and games with blow-up dolls.

What, you believe what a man says when he has already said that a prime function of language is to lie?

And yes, I saw the news article with that silly construction somewhere on the net, but found it beyond amusement.

Any pointers? I'd like to read some of them.
. In the chapter "Word against Object" of his book "After Babel", George Steiner has the key phrase: Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is , and argues at length for the importance of the counter-factual in Language.

Thank you, Weis Bier. I'd've hated to have to have taken Nuncle on a tour of the morass that is my Junk Drawer Memory®.

In the chapter "Word against Object" of his book "After Babel", George Steiner

Thank you very much. I must reread After Babel. It's been simply too many decades.

The social lie is a critical aspect of society. If you don't think so, try being completely honest with your co-workers. The problem is assuming that communication is based on something infallible--and since it's all based on human constructs, perfection is unrealistic.

try being completely honest with your co-workers - no problem, as long as you limit yourself to the sympathetic co-workers :). And sympathy is something that can be expressed without much in the way of words.

All, crimethink.

Language is innocent, and with an innate capacity for infinite beauty. The beauty of languages is in their forms and meanings, independent of their function, whether grammatical or informational. Language is honest, but its use isn't always honest. Rather than a refusal to accept an imperfect world, language is, besides an artifact of inherent beauty, a resource for making a "more perfect" (mutatis mutandi) world.

Now really boys, put down your books and think.

The advandage of language lies only in the accurate communication of progressive and sequential cause-and-effect events which postively effect the continuance of the breeding group.

And watch your semantics; "lies" are not "lies" if used for the purpose of instruction or example, and if - and it is a pretty big "if" - there are no semantical conflicts with objective reality, meaning: the objective reality percieved by our senses which are doubled-checked by the congruence of language.

Otherwise you guys rock.

You oughta know about that.

Bother to explain yourself, Faldage, otherwise the casual viewer of this board might think that you are being snide simply because you have nothing to add to the subject under discussion.

Language is a universe in its own, evolved and evolving and open to be used for so many purposes. Thinking, expressing, logic, non logic, play, beauty, bringing into the open things of the mind not yet expressed, realism, surrealism. Communication ,yes, that too.

Isn't this where Anna comes in to say, "Move along, folks; nothing to see here"?

Ik dacht U wegging, Branny?

Ja,ik ben weg! Ik ben weg. Aramis.
(Uw Nederlands is perfect, de correcte beleefdheids vorm. )

Some technical problems with the disappearence engines.
O.K.! I'll get beamed off now. NOW! IK BEN WEG.

But I will pass by at date 07/07/07

Are you saying that you believe the greatest function of language is for group-protection ("continuance") and/or sexual relations ("the breeding group") ?

You said the advantage of language is "only" in communication which promotes those two activities. Is that what you meant to say, or am I misunderstanding? I hope there are other advantages to using language.

Anyway, sea-slugs and coral continue and breed with what seems to my untrained eyes to be a total absence of good grammar and rich vocabulary.

I have had patients who, because of a stroke, have damage to the language areas of the brain. Note the plural - areas. The receptive and expressive language centers are separate although closely linked. I have had patients who are able to follow commands, thus showing comprehension of language but whose speech is disrupted at levels ranging from difficulty using the correct word to total gibberish or even complete silence.
I have also had patients who lose the ability not only to speak but to use any symbolism including pointing or pictures.

I am not sure how this fits in with any of the aforementioned theories of language but the human mind, as well as the brain interest me.

Oddly enough it is not unusual for a patient who speaks 2 languages to lose the second and rvert to the first language of childhood even if they have not spoken it for years. One elderly woman had to start learning English from scratch because neither her husband of 50 years nor her kids spoke any French.

Yes, Zed -- I had a friend whose father suffered aphasia after a stroke. This was in the 80s. He was a Jew who'd fled Poland for Brazil during the Nazi regime. He totally lost his Portuguese and most of his English, though he could understand English when it was spoken to him. He could still communicate in a mix of Yiddish and Polish.

No second-guessing allowed, Aramis.

"Words That Work - it's not what you say it's what people hear" by Dr. Frank Luntz. Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0259-9
For an interesting take on language. New book; may not be in free libraries as yet.

And I just throw this into the mix : Ever had the situation where some esoteric thing was explained to you and you fully understood only later to be unable to explain it to someone else, even though you still understood it? Words fail. Sometimes. And then there is Ameican Sign Language (ASL)
But those are enough cats among the pigeons to be going on with.

Howdy Mr. Cur,

Not ot be contrary, but, I must write that I disagree with the assertion that language is the vehicle for acquiring thought. You might find these three examples persuasive:

First, what about prelinguistic children? They have no language yet much observation/experimentation tells us clearly that they do think.

Second, what of deaf persons, who through unfortunate circumstance, do not have the opportunity to acquire any language. There are a few such folks around who have grown to adulthood with no language at all (neither sign language nor spoken langauge). Yet, they can clearly think' e.g., they can repair locks - a task which involves plenty of if-then logic. (For an absolutely fascinating description of this see a book titled "A man without words." The author's last name is "Schaller" and I can't recommend this book enough. It's an extrordinary story.)

Third, what of polysemy? If words and their referents don't correspond on a one-to-one basis, we must acknowledge the ability of a sentence's context to guide us in determining the meaning of ambiguous words. So, the next logical question is how would a person cognitively represent this ability?

Thus, I think that the conclusions from modern cognitive science tells us that while it is likely that only the possesion of language allows one to acquire formal/abstract thought, the function of language in this dynamic is strictly an intrapersonal one.
Clearly, language can assist thougth, but it is not thought's equal, nor is it even a necessary condition for the acquisition of thought.

As you can imagine, most of my background has persuaded me of the above, but frankly, I have heard little of the other side of the debate. Can you fill me in on it, and describe how it could refute the three above propositions?

Chris,

Hello. I unfortunately cannot offer any well-founded arguments. I have been studying language for only one year, and all the studying has been inside my own room. By reading some of Locke, many grammar books and books concerning language (the book 1984 adds to this a unique perspective of the delimiting of thought by the delimiting of language), and with much observation of speakers, I have concluded that language must be thought and thought must be language.
If that conclusion is naive, that is fine. Many years are left before my death; I have much time to learn and change my thoughts. As I search through the posts in this site, I notice the large amount of information that are still unknown to me. It is compelling. My one year has taken me to a great conclusion, though, I believe. Many kids my age do not think of language, and I believe that makes them less defined.
My arguments now are not very refined, too. Many books and writers disagree, and I do not know which side is more sensible. Just as now, I sometimes feel wrong for thinking that I am right. Others have more intricate theories, and present them better. Language still confuses me, but I am learning as quick as I can.

Thinking out loud - or rather on line.
Language consists mainly of words and the rules on how to use them and words are the symbolic representations of concepts or objects. Concepts and objects obviously exist whether or not there are symbols for them; in fact we don't need symbols for something unless we are going to think about or try to communicate about it. But we like to name things and so we create words for those concepts which are important to us. For example ask a skier and a non-skier how many kinds of snow they can name. Because it is easier to mentally juggle concepts, or think about things, when we have symbols for them we tend to think mainly about concepts we have words for.
Thus it becomes circular. Thinking creates language and yet language can limit thinking.
This is why learning a language can teach you so much about the culture that created it.

"Many years are left before my death"

Knock twice on wood with you say that! That's okay though, I already knocked for you. And mahogany.

Back on topic. As someone who can think fluently in two languages, as someone who can see so many points of view in life I'd call what you're presenting a gross oversimplification of the human mind. Do you really think so little of the mind, what created skyscapers, airplanes, trains, cyberworlds, that you believe that language determines so much? Many people can excel and think beyond language. Do you think Einstein thought in terms other Germans could understand?

That's why people coin new words. That's why the English we spoke 1000 years ago didn't sound anything at all like the language we speak now. Growth, expansion, thinking beyond language to create language. Life is so much more than that, that it's sad to think that people can even subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Language is the representation of thinking not it's source.
That is the thought that I couldn't put into language yesterday.

Amen,[]Logwood

Sorry,
spacebar
not
working

Couldst not utilize an ASCII stand-in [e.g., Alt-255]?

"Improvise, adapt, overcome."

-USMC concept

...or, copy a string of text and adust the words, eh, eh, eh!

Linux box doesn't use ALT sequences. I worked around by copying and pasting a space. Now I've got a new keyboard.

The evolution of our language now seems to be a decay. Why should "gonna" remain in our language? It is lazy! Damn, I am not afraid of being called a stickler, gonna is utterly stupid. It changes a sentence too much:

Is he leaving tomorrow?

Is he gonna leave tomorrow?

Oh, honey, there is so much you don't know, and I admire you for trying to understand. Better scholars than I can direct you to the Victorian inkhorns et al who tried to put forth the same arguments.

To be a true pedant, you need decades of knowledge to fall back on. And then you're still gonna be obnoxious.

An erudite former member of this board, one NicholasW, described himself in his profile as "a precisian". When I asked him why, he said that it was because "pedant" carried an implicit suggestion of one who was a stickler for details but who was often incorrect. Such a definition certainly did not fit NicholasW.

Who's the "we", kemosabe? And how in Knut's name have you managed to hang around speaking English for the last 1000 years?

[thread jack]

Anna your above comment reminds me of a behind-the-scenes thing I saw once about the show "Seinfeld." There was a line that Jerry had to speak that was "Are you gonna do it?" He kept saying it and it wasn't funny. He tried stressing different words. "Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it?" But it still wasn't funny. But when he said "Are you gonna do it?" it was funny.

Not sure what hell that has to do with anything, but...

[/thread jack]

To the smartass up above with the unpronounceable nickname, the answer is "humans".

Not only that, but single features of language ability are distributed over two or more areas, are they not? Part of relearning language for some people, requires (or results in) using parts of the brain not previously used for language. Alas, I have no longer my fine books on speech pathology, but you can tell us, Zed?



Excellent points, ChrisMcA.

Isn't Helen Keller the example par excellence of a Languageless Thinker?

What came first. What came really, really first?
First feelings (emotions), then thoughts, then language.
"Heart, mind and body."

You guys should read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.

or any book by Oliver Sacks! (he's one of my favorite authors.. i've even met him (ok it was a reading/book signing.. but.. it was a small close group (Mus of Nat. History))

you're not gonna wanna know this, but here it is, as a matter of donkamentation, if nothing else.

'gonna' (as well as 'wanna') can be found in several mainstream dictionaries such as AHD4, Compact OED, Cambridge, Encarta, etc. (per onelook.com)

-joe (I'm jus sayin) friday

no doubt curmudgeons in the past railed against "god be with you" being shortened into good bye

and where convinced that english was going to hell in a hand basket it that sort of stuff was going to be allowed.

do think there was a time when chitterlings were call chitterlings, and not chit'lins?

was there once a name Saint John, (before it became Syngen?)

i remember in my lifetime, telephone--who says telephone any more? its phone( both noun and verb!) and cel phone.

i still speak of dialing, but its been 20 years since i owned a phone with a dial. (my cel has touch screen, not even a (numeric) pad)(no its not an i-phone)

language is imprecise.. it carry relics, and it sprouts new words for new idea, new situations. i'm gunna, (like gonna but more gutteral,--closer i think to how most say the word) sign off now!

What do you mean "was there once"? There still is. Not only is the surname still spelled "Saint John", there are still people with that name who pronounce it "Saint John". I have yet to see the surname spelled as "Syngen".

>I have yet to see the surname spelled as "Syngen".

no, but see Sinjin.