|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
|
OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
I'm starting a new thread on a sub-thread developed over in Q&A's "Mongrel Pronunciations":
There, Sparteye brings up one Dr Tsunoda's research on the brain. He's quoted as saying, "I believe that the mother tongue differenciates the way in which people receive, process, feel, and understand sounds in the external environment.... The mother tongue is closely related to the development of the emotional mechanism in the brain. I conjecture that the mother tongue acquired in childhood is closely linked with the formation of the unique culture and mentality of each ethnic group."
There's nothing new here. As early as 1929, Edward Sapir fomulated the same hypothesis: "We see and hear ... very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation."
What do y'all think?
Also, in the January Smithsonian magazine (the folks who brought you Anu Garg in December) there is a piece on language acquisition called "Accents Are Forever." It's pretty widely accepted that a foreign language learned after puberty is learned imperfectly (Noam Chomskey did pioneer work on this theory at MIT). Patricia Kuhl of the Univ. of Washington goes a step farther and suggests that "By their first birthday, babies are getting locked into the sounds of the language they hear spoken."
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues01/jan01/phenom_jan01.html
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
That's interesting, when Dr. T. says the mother tongue
affects the way we hear and understand sounds in the external environment. I wonder if he meant non-verbal sounds, as well. I'm reminded of the post or article I read where it gave the different sounds that are assigned to represent a dog's bark, in different languages. There was quite a lot of variation.
Definitely, your mother tongue affects the way you hear language. My Turkish friend taught me to count to ten in his language. Number one is pronounced beer, and of course that's what I thought he was saying at first--he laughed when I told him I didn't have any! I've always been rather envious of those who managed to be brought up in a bilingual home. I think it's accurate that a language learned after puberty will be learned imperfectly (in general). The age where our brains are best-equipped for taking in another language is before the age of six.
A corollary to knowing our mother tongue best, and having more difficulty with one(s) learned subsequently is the way our brains seem to be "wired" for remembering: what we learn first stays with us the longest. Remember trying to
learn lists of spelling or vocabulary words? The words at the top of the list were the easiest to memorize. What's at the end is next-easiest, and for most of us the middle gets lost. That's why I had my children learn to recognize the letters of the alphabet at random: I wanted all letters to have an "equal opportunity", as it were. How many songs can you recall only the first line of? I'll bet everyone knows do-re-mi, and with another second, la-ti-do.
Do you have to make more effort to think of the middle two?
But also, our life experiences affect what we comprehend. A funny example comes from a catalog that advertised Owl brand clothing, made of Goretex fabric. Apparently they had to put in a disclaimer saying that they were aware that Al Gore did not live in Texas! My point is that which I made in another long-ago post: we tend to try to fit new experiences into something that we have a frame of reference for, or an understanding of. I think a great many people were and are not familiar with Owl Goretex, so their minds interpreted it as Al Gore, Tex. (sort of), because the words Al Gore were extremely familiar, and
Owl Gore(tex) was not.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
Great question, AnnaS – and thanks for the pointer to that fascinating article. I had not previously heard of Patricia Kuhl’s work, so now have some more exploring to do!
I have little specialist knowledge of this area of study, but it seems instinctively right to me. It’s consistent with what I observe of so many human characteristics: that our brains seem particularly adapted to look for patterns, to the extent that we filter out the redundant data (even ‘interference’, in the context of a second language, in Kuhl’s terms). But I would think that – that’s my pattern!
I’m just reading Describing Language*, and can see a correlation between the description of Malinowski’s and Halliday’s views with Kuhl’s experiments on the brain’s formative phase. In this general survey, Malinowski is represented as stressing the importance of “the meaning of each utterance within the actual context”, quoted approvingly by Halliday as “a context of situation” – this is all, as I understand it, contrasting with another model of speech which views language as a mere code passing information like morse between two terminals.
So if we learn language in our most formative and receptive stage of development, and do so in ways that Patricia Kuhl’s experiments strongly suggests is inclusive of non-verbal and contextual information (as our intuition might have suggested is the case!), then what could be more natural than that this pattern should be repeated in subsequent life? In other words we absorb, with that formative language and accent and vocabulary, a whole set of equally formative “emotional mechanism… closely linked with the formation of the unique culture and mentality …” of the group. I would dispute Tsunoda’s leap to identify this with ethnicity, however: seems to me to be linked logically only to the cultural imprint offered by the adults. This may be the same thing in effective outcome, but can be traced to raising, not race.
Where was the Sapir quote from – is it in Culture, Language & Personality?
BTW, my 13 year old daughter was reading the print-out of the Smithsonian article over supper last night, and said “Cool! I’ve got two language maps in my brain! I spoke Welsh at school and English at home.”
Forgive the ramblings of just an amateur dabbler – I would be fascinated to hear the perspective of more experienced students in this area, and also of La Belle Dame and our other bilingual members.
*For anyone interested the reference was to:
Describing Language
Graddol, Cheshire & Swann
OU Press, 1994
ISBN 0 335 19315 3
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
I'm interested in the subject of at what age an accent becomes "fixed". A friend told me that he had moved a lot as a child and had always arrived with the wrong accent.
Belonging is terribly important when you are young, yet he had arrived in Wales with a Scottish accent, London with a Welsh accent and back to Scotland with a London accent, the worst of all possible worlds.
It is wonderful the way that as you get older a strange accent makes you more "interesting" than "strange" perhaps some small part of us evolves in the way that we find people from new places with (maybe) different perpectives, interesting, rather than a threat to our entire value system.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87
journeyman
|
|
journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87 |
I have no research to back my ramblings, but here goes. I am bilingual - German and English. I learned German from my Berlin-born mother, so I speak German with a light Berlin accent. I was born in West Virginia in an area where the natives have a decided Appalachian accent. My father grew up in Minnesota and thus speaks a fine mid-western accented English! So, I spoke Appalachian accented English with my playmates, mid-western-accented English to my father and all other adults, and "berliner Deutsch" with my mother. What to make of this? I have developed a pretty good ear for accents and can mimic people, sometimes unconsciously. Do I have a German "ethnicity?" No more than what my mother taught me - I really am an American (six months of living in France, a country I dearly, dearly love, showed me that). Do I perhaps "understand" my mother better for being able to communicate with her in her native tongue? Yes, I think so. She is no stranger to me, and my father swears that even after 45 years of marriage, during which they have always spoken German to each other, there are still moments when he "can't figure her out."  Am I any better at learning languages because I am bilingual? No! My French, which I learned in high school and majored in in college, is okay (rusty!!!). My attempts to learn another foreign language have been failures. Perhaps I'm a lazy language learner. I do know that speaking two languages besides English has allowed me the pleasure of really getting to know two cultures. I have had experiences and met people by being able to speak with them in their mother tongue that would otherwise have been unavailable to me. But these sorts of experiences are open to anyone who speaks a second language, no matter when it was learned. In short - learn a language and expand your world!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444 |
LOVE this subject - especially the opportunity to rant on about my own experience with no need to back it up scientifically....
But, a (semi) scientific point first - there is a great book called 'The Language Instinct' by Stephen Pinker that I would recommend if you are interested in this area. According to him the research shows that humans acquire 'grammar' around the age of two or three, and that they acquire grammar regardless of the ungrammaticality (!) of the language spoken to them. To support this he talks of the difference between 'pidgin' - a means of communicating for adults with different native tongues, that has no consistent grammar - and 'patois' where words are adopted from different native tongues by children who meld the whole with a consistent grammar to create a new language. He also compares people who have been locked away from human contact (usually by psychotic parents) until different ages and looks at the langauge they end up learning. Those who learn late apparently never really 'get' grammar, which severely limits their ability to communicate.
(I may have all that wrong, but that's what I remember from it in this context.)
As for the language you speak affecting your character, I 100% believe this. The person I am when speaking Japanese is quite quite different from the person I am when speaking English.
I've also always thought it interesting how the same sentiment may be very easy to say in one language but hard in another:
'I miss you.' 'Tu me manques.' (literally 'you are lacking for me.') Note which person the emphasis is on and you can see why we rough egotistical Anglo-Saxons have taken over so much of the world.
NB It's much much harder in Japanese and I can't even think of a way of saying it that I wouldn't have to check with a native speaker. Damn! NOw I'll have to go and ask...
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
The person I am when speaking Japanese is quite quite different from the person I am when speaking English.
That's interesting, Bridget. Do you mean that you sort of
mentally adopt their cultural mannerisms as well? I have little knowledge of their culture, so this may not be a good example, but I believe they place a high value on respect, so using that, when you're speaking Japanese would you be extra-careful to ensure that your speech (and mannerisms?) demonstrated respect?
I am delighted that you're posting again, Dearest!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444
addict
|
|
addict
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444 |
(Aside: my posting is likely to be very off and on for ages as my real life seems to be taking more than 24 hours a day! So on the board it will be a case of 'not all there' - some may notice no difference!)
Do you mean that you sort of
mentally adopt their cultural mannerisms as well?
I don't think it's mannerisms exactly. It goes deeper than that. But there are some things that are tied into the Japanese language that could be said to be matched in their culture (and incidentally in many cases I think British culture may be closer to Japanese than it is to American, but that's a whole other story!).
For example, the language 'expects' politeness to strangers / members of other groups (cf 'the honourable member for XXX' in British politics, but taken seriously). It 'expects' restraint about self - no need to put in 'I' or 'me' as the subject unless it could be in doubt. So less need to push oneself forward, also possibly more practice at noticing others who do not push for attention?
And it is perfectly acceptable (normal!) Japanese to leave sentences unfinished, or finish with 'but' - there is a whole expectation that people will fill in gaps and make the effort to understand what you meant. This is not vagueness or politeness, this is active listening. I certainly should do more of that in English.
But the point is, Jackie, it's not something I feel I'd need to be 'extra-careful' to ensure I did. It's a change in my internal focus that comes about automatically when I am functioning in that language.
...mindless burble before breakfast. I'll try to think of a really good example on the way to work!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 137
member
|
|
member
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 137 |
When I was taking Russian, my teacher explained that the Russian word for peace was the same as the word for world. So she said, when Russians say they want peace, they are also saying they want the world; to understand the language was to understand the people. Isn't this the premise behind political correctness, where language goes the people will follow?
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87
journeyman
|
|
journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87 |
Note which person the emphasis is on and you can see why we rough egotistical Anglo-Saxons have taken over so much of the world
There is another example that is perhaps even more glaring. In French and in German, and probably many other languages I don't know, one says "j'ai raison" and "Ich habe Recht," respectively. In English we say "I am right." In French and German I claim only to "have a bit of rightness." I never abrogate anyone else's claim to rightness in claiming some for myself as I do when I claim that "I am right."
I was also reminded that in German (and French) I have two pronouns available to me in addressing people: Du and tu (thee) and Sie and Vous (you). I miss that in English. How much more loving and friendly to address a friend, companion, mate as "thee" to distinguish my feelings for that person from strangers.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 3,065 |
In reply to:
there is a great book called 'The Language Instinct' by Stephen Pinker that I would recommend if you are interested in this area.
And by an amazing coincidence, Stephen Pinker is Anu's chat guest this Thursday/Friday (depending on your time zone).
Bingley
Bingley
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
|
|
veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
Polite vs. familiar forms of "you"
It is true that the English we now speak has only one form of the second person, but it was not always so. The singular form "thou" with its other grammatical forms, and its equivalent verb forms (e.g., "thou art") began to disappear early in the 17th century and was just about completely gone by the end of the English Civil War, except for certain formal purposes, such as prayer and other liturgical use. (Still being used to this day a good deal for liturgical use in many Protestant churches.) You can track the process in the work of a single writer, John Donne. In his early work, he is using Thou consistently, as time goes on, less consistently, so that by his last years, ca. 1725 to 1730 (I think that was the year he died) he is using "you" pretty consistently, but not exclusively. The point(s) I'm trying to make here is 1) it is a fairly recent (as these things go) development; 2) the change involved simply dropping the singular form and using the plural form for both singular and plural, replacing the nominative "ye" with "you".
The French "vous" used for a polite form is the plural, but it didn't come to be the polite singular form the same way the English plural came to be used for singular. It comes from the old practice of Highly-placed Persons referring to themselves in the plural ("We are not amused") and their inferiors addressing them in the plural. So when you addresss a Frenchman in the plural, it's a compliment, inferring that he is a high-born or high-placed person. The German "Sie" is likewise a plural and comes to be a polite form for similar reasons, but also allied with the notion you get with the Italian polite form, "lei", which is 3rd person singular feminine and is a sort of contraction or substitution for "sua eccelenza - your excellency" or some such fawning honorific.
English, thus, when it dropped the old 2nd person singular, simply substituted the plural; it did not create a familiar or polite form, as the Continental languages, reflecting the social distinctions of the time, did.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
An olio of responses:
This thread raises so many interesting possibilities, I hardly know where to begin. Here’s a smorgasbord of facts, opinions and experiences. The neurological information is mostly from the book, The Brain, Restak (Bantam Books, 1984).
Language disabilities (aphasias) were the first abnormalities which established the specialization of parts of the brain. In right-handed people, the area known as Broca’s area in the left hemisphere is the center of speech and language ability. The separate hemispheres are posited to offer redundant capabilities in early life, allowing for damage to one side or the other with little loss of function, but beyond childhood, the specialization of brain function becomes fixed. Thus, a child suffering a stroke usually recovers speech function, while complete recovery by an adult is rare.
Postmortem examination of the brains of dyslexics has been limited, but one autopsy disclosed that within the language areas of the left hemisphere were disorganized cortex layers, scrambled and whirled with primitive, larger cells. And, the usually larger size of the planum temporale in the left hemisphere was not evident.
Sex differences in brain development include language capabilities. Females generally speak earlier, learn foreign languages more easily, and outperform males in tests of verbal fluency. Dyslexia, stuttering, delayed speech, and autism all occur with greater frequency in males. No anatomic differences have been found; the developmental differences might be due to chemical changes in brain function caused by the influence of sex hormones in early prenatal development.
The loss of the ability to process language can include lack of comprehension of semantics, grammatical components or prosody (the melodic and stress contours of speech). Incidents of loss of these abilities caused Restak to observe the varying abilities of even normal people to comprehend and appreciate irony, puns and other subtleties of language.
"The right hemisphere seems to contribute the color, the verve, the ‘firepower’ to ordinary speech. In addition to puns and wordplay, it makes possible the expression of enthusiasm, joy, sadness and despair."
Studies of split-brained people (those whose corpus collosum has been severed) demonstrate a divergence in information stored by the hemispheres, which the brains of even normal people do not always integrate into both halves of the brain.
Throughout all this the left hemisphere, with its preference for verbalized, symbolic expression, tends to elaborate reasons, sometimes even spurious ones, for what is going on.
In one test, P.S. was shown two pictures, one projected to the left hemisphere (a chicken claw) and one to the right hemisphere (a snow scene). He was asked to indicate from a series of pictures what picture he had just seen. P.S. selected a picture of a chicken with his right hand and a picture of a snow shovel with his left. When asked why he had made these particular selections, P.S. remarked: ‘That’s easy. The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken’s shed.’
In this instance, P.S.’s left hemisphere employed its language superiority to construct a plausible, ‘logical’ explanation for the choices he had selected. But the explanation was wrong, an error that suggests … that our speech and language systems routinely attempt to interpret rather than simply report our activities. If P.S.’s explanation is at all typical of the rest of us, it suggests that the reasons we give for our own behavior may not be the salient ones at all.
… Michael Gazzaniga has concluded that the human brain is organized in terms of a ‘mental society.’ In other words, alongside our verbal system, there may reside any number of ‘mental units [that] can exist, can have memories, values, and emotions, and all of these can be expressed through any of a variety of response systems.’ What makes this whole process so eerie is that these systems may not be in touch with the verbal system at all but rather, have their own existence outside of the areas of our brain responsible for our language and our logic."
I enjoyed reading works on neurology even before my autistic son was born (I especially recommend Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), but have of course accelerated my reading in the area of autism recently. One of the most pervasive disabilities of autistic people is their inability to process language. Although high functioning, my son cannot comprehend the parts of speech, and must learn each phrase or expression in context, as if he were trying to learn enough of a foreign language to take a holiday in two weeks. He cannot transfer what he has learned to a different context.
And talk about mondegreens!
And so literal: last month, my son’s school entered two of his art works into a competition. The school sent home several forms which were required to be completed, and signed by both my son and me. After I filled out the forms, I called Ben over and told him that he would have to sign the forms several times. I pointed him to the first signature line, where he proceeded to write "Ben Ben Ben Ben…"
Of all the autistic children I have met in the past several years, they are overwhelmingly male, and have an unusually high incidence of left-handedness as well.
This information leads me to believe that language comprehension and development affect overall thought processes and are more central to our core beings than most people even suspect.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87
journeyman
|
|
journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 87 |
John Donne died 1631 (by my Oxford Companion to English Lit.
The history of how "thee" and "you" and their German and French counterparts came to signify what they do today is interesting (I'll have to go back and look at Donne. Remember that as a young man he wrote passionate love poetry and once he "got religion" he wrote sermons, etc. That may also have had an impact on his use of familiar, formal, and plural second person pronouns. Great topic for a paper!)
However, I stand by what I wrote. In today's usage, there is a marked difference in how English, German and French deal with intimate friends and strangers in pronoun usage.
Thanks for this piece of the thread.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Wow, Sparteye, thanks for that wonderful post! Weird things, our brains. I did know that autism in females is rare. I am glad that your son is as high-functioning as he is. I once read--can't recall where--about a girl who was
diagnosed and treated as autistic into her teens. Somehow she made it known that her hearing was not only hypersensitive but boundary-free, too: light rain outside the window was so loud to her that she was unable to concentrate on what someone in the room was saying. She was given a series of desensitization and training sessions, and reportedly could then process information in a normal manner--as far as her neurological functions went.
But she had gone for so many years being unable to interact normally with people that she continued to have difficulty with this for a long time.
Michael Gazzaniga has concluded that the human brain is organized in terms of a ‘mental society.’ In other words, alongside our verbal system, there may reside any number of ‘mental units [that] can exist, can have memories, values, and emotions, and all of these can be expressed through any of a variety of response systems.’ What makes this whole process so eerie is that these systems may not be in touch with the verbal system at all but rather, have their own existence outside of the areas of our brain responsible for our language and our logic."
Whoa, that is creepy! It sets me to wondering first, what these parallel mental units might have in them, and secondly, what forms of expression do they take, if not verbal? We have had a couple of interesting discussions here about thinking in pictures; I wonder if this is the sort of thing Mr. Gazzaniga has in mind. (Ooh, I just made a terrible pun and didn't even mean to!) I guess speech isn't always necessary, but it sure comes in handy.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
"I guess speech isn't always necessary, but it sure comes in handy."
Personally, I find that I can perceive something without being able to articulate it, but that it becomes much more concrete when I am finally able to put it into words. I have struggled for years to adequately describe Ben's deficiencies (especially when I was still trying to obtain a diagnosis), but there are no words for many of them, and I have to settle for using preexisting descriptions (he's stubborn, he's compulsive, he's distracted...) which don't really hit the mark. Have you even noticed the resolution which comes to a patient when finally given a diagnosis, even if the cause of the condition is unknown, and the cure unknown? Putting a name to something has a magic all its own, and I think is the basis for much of our magic mythology.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Have you even noticed the resolution which comes to a patient when finally given a diagnosis, even if the cause of the condition is unknown, and the cure unknown? Putting a name to something has a magic all its own, and I think is the basis for much of our magic mythology.
Yes, I have noticed this. I think that maybe this stems from our core-level belief that everything must surely be
resolvable, discovered, and/or revealed, if we can only find the right keys and use them the right ways. Oh dear, I
didn't put that very well. I think that we as humans have the essential belief that everything is possible, given time and the right circumstances. I think this type of belief is necessary for our very continuance, for without hope, what indeed is the point of living and procreating?
Even when a patient is told there is no cure, having a concrete diagnosis gives him and his loved ones a place to start working from. I am thinking of Lorenzo's Oil.
Speaking of wanting concrete terms: early one morning last week, it occurred to me as I looked at the effect of the rosy sunrise light on the bare tree branches, that this color might be able to be described as something other than
'the color of dark gray bark with sunrise light on it'. I couldn't think of anything, nor could my friend who is both an artist and a scientist. I'm still wondering.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,661 |
"Music is the language of emotions for which there are no words" (I am unable to give credit where it is due for my library is packed away)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055
old hand
|
|
old hand
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 1,055 |
I like the quote. What about, and I paraphrase: 'We know our history more vividly through its music than through historians' Sparteye, I read your posts with great euthusiasm as you touched on such topics in another thread. You wrote: "Putting a name to something has a magic all its own" Isn't this often just fooling ourselves into thinking we've have the concept rock solid in our minds. Take the concept of 'time', what a joke, yet it's is used as if a firm grasp existed. It often seems putting ideas into words spoils the purity of the concept. Anna's mention of Sapir who is often linked with Whorf in his theories concerning language acquisition really interests me. I read an essay concerning the apparent debunking of the posits by Noam Chomsky (who is widely supported), a classic fallacy: http://www.sunflower.com/~dewatson/dma-dwh.htmand for nikeblack this: http://www.mauthner-gesellschaft.de/mauthner/whorf.htmlAnna quoted: 'By their first birthday, babies are getting locked into the sounds of the language they hear spoken' ...This made me ask: 'What if they've heard multiple languages by that time?' All our words are but scraps that fall from the feast of the mind - Kahlil Gibran
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
Well it seems language is just one (a very effective one, albeit) way of communication-
Music has the power to change the world– it certainly has the power to effect our thoughts and emotions.
Mathematics is an other way of communicating– it is in some way a language of its own.
I sure Stephen Pinker will have some ideas about it–I wish I was free tomorrow to join the chat.
there are people who have Synesthesia: the ability to hear colors and/or taste shapes. (Or more generally, to experience sense sensations more extensively– One example has a child pick up a baby block– and say "its Yellow" (the wooden block had several pastel colors, but no yellow)– his father corrected–"cubes are ochre, which is a special kind of yellow" The mother thought the whole incident strange!
While I do not experience synesthesia, – I certain realize that sometimes, my perceptions of things are different than others. – and in another thread, someone sited someone who found the diphthong oi to be painful– it might be that they too, had a form of synesthesia.
There is a book "the man who tastes shapes" (Google brought up a lot of sites on synesthesia, but not the book in the first 20 entries)about the subject. –Synesthesia tends to run in families too– It is somewhere on the continuum of how our senses work, not autism– but not "normal"..
And Sparteye, while it is sometime true that having a name for something can help in dealing with it– it is a double edged sword.
We think we know what autism (or schizophrenia) is– and use our definition to make judgements. But both are in someways just part of the human continuum– your son is perhaps 3 or 4 standard deviations from the norm in certain things (and maybe dead the norm for others; height, weight, or eruption time for teeth) We need people like him that to soften the edges of the bell curve of normal.
prejudice make us want to tighten up the bell curve, and bring the extremes closer to the mean– but I think the human reality is a very broad flat curve.. with extremes very far from the mean– and still part of the continuum.
Naming things is one way we enforce our prejudices.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773
Pooh-Bah
|
|
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
Thanks, belligerentyouth for the link. The discussion of color perception and language reminded me of a puzzler which has bothered me for years: Why, do you suppose, is pastel red such a significant color in English that it has its own term, "pink," while other pastels are merely called pastel yellow, pastel blue ....
And of troy, you are absolutely right about "autism" being a spot on a bell curve. "Autism" itself encompasses conditions which can be described on a bell curve, from profound autism to those we merely think a bit odd in some respects, and that curve fits in turn into a larger curve describing a larger portion of humanity. I have contemplated whether certain other family members would have been classified as autistic had they had more profound language difficulties. My own son's form, hyperlexia, has a couple of quirks, such as a tendency to large size (used by one nuerologist as a diagnostic tool). He was 23" long and 10 lbs 4 oz at birth, and hasn't looked back.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
|
|
old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
In reply to:
He was 23" long and 10 lbs 4 oz at birth...
Please extend my sympathies to your wife.
Ouch.
P.S. My apologies... Sparteye corrected me that my sympathies are better extended to *her*. Funny the assumptions one makes from a gender-neutral log-in identity ~ 
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
prejudice make us want to tighten up the bell curve, and bring the extremes closer to the mean– but I think the human reality is a very broad flat curve.. with extremes very far from the mean– and still part of the continuum.
Naming things is one way we enforce our prejudices.
Helen, you have spoken the truth, esp. that last sentence.
We've had many discussions on politically-incorrect names and why they are incorrect, so it isn't necessary for me to go into that here. Some of our name-calling is deliberately hurtful, and some is not. (And, incidentally, this doesn't need to be actual name-calling to be hurtful--it can be simply an association with something negative.)
Humanity is indeed a broad curve of variations. I think it would be very interesting to read (I'm not suggesting a new thread, just wondering if there have been studies done that are available) what a number of individuals define as
"normal". I'd bet money that no two would match!
I would like to add, however, that prejudice isn't
necessarily the only reason we'd like others to be like ourselves (or vice versa, more commonly, perhaps?). Fear can play a part in this, too, though I suppose fear really is at the root of prejudices, if we but admit it.
I wonder, sometimes, if we'll ever figure ourselves out:
on the one hand, we want to be "like" everybody else; yet on the other, we want recognition/rewards for some of the things that make us different from everyone else!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
|
|
old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
In reply to:
I think it would be very interesting to read (I'm not suggesting a new thread, just wondering if there have been studies done that are available) what a number of individuals define as
"normal".
I recently read a quote... "The only normal people are the ones you don't know." Can't recall who said it, but clearly it was someone wise ~
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 4,757 |
I asked a variant of this question (the original topic) of Steven Pinker tonight - check the transcript if interested.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
|
|
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I resurrect this thread (on its anniversary) not only for its relevancy to the twist taken in Dr. Bill's Fabulous Word List thread in I&A but because I wanted to comment on Bobyb's observation:
The French "vous" used for a polite form is the plural, but it didn't come to be the polite singular form the same way the English plural came to be used for singular. It comes from the old practice of Highly-placed Persons referring to themselves in the plural ("We are not amused") and their inferiors addressing them in the plural.
This is exactly the way Shakespeare used the words thou/thee and ye/you. Read his plays and notice that when people are speaking up (e.g., peasant to lord or lord to king) they use ye/you but when speaking down they use thou/thee.
|
|
|
|
Forums16
Topics13,913
Posts229,334
Members9,182
| |
Most Online3,341
Dec 9th, 2011
|
|
|
0 members (),
752
guests, and
1
robot. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
