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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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
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veteran
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veteran
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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.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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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.
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
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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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
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"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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"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)
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old hand
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old hand
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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
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
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