On 5/26/10, CeJ <[email protected]> wrote: > Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evolutionary timeline for language > > >>> The entire article looks dubious and would require a lifetime to discuss. > > CB: A lifetime ? What is dubious ?<< > > Most articles on linguistics at wiki are awful. Any attempt to revise > them will result in a small clique 'reverting' them. > > I was however jokingly referring to the many 'dubious discuss' > comments that peppered the article.
^^^^^^^ CB: Doubt and certainty. standards of proof. ^^^^ > > > > >> I think the overall thrust of the accounts I posted excerpts from is > > formed thus: that syntactisized upper body > > ^^^^^ > CB: Why upper body ? Body language includes the lower body , too, the > whole body.<< > > Yes but gesturing with syntax and coordinated (mentally controlled) > with vocalization limits you to the upper body. And it is on the face > and the upper respitory and digestive traces where the two systems > converge. ^^^^^^^ CB: Think of dancing. Talking and walking at the same time, etc. Walking has syntax. I suppose with Engels , you are thinking of upright posture, and "free" hands as at the human origin. > > > >>Gesturing and sophisticated > > vocalization abilities > > ^^^^^^^ > CB: A lightbulb just went on for me with your emphasis on gesturing. > You are just saying that a "sign language" came before a vocalized > medium for language, no ?<< > > A type of 'sign language' is still found in speech, even though we are > dominated by the vocal aspects of the system. Try speaking without > moving your body. Try speaking to someone without 'gesturing'. People > who are fluent sign language users still VOCALIZE when they gesture. > Their language is as human and as much a language as any other, but > with a different emphasis. And what does their sign language have in > common with our speech? One, it has a 'phonology' in that we (at least > think we) can analyze into sub-lexical 'units'. Two, it is controlled > from the top down (the 'mind' must first conceive a thought to be > communicated and then in some sort of 'buffer' structure and plan it, > and then realize it). Three, it is kinesthetically experienced by the > person controlling and producing it. > > CJ ^^^^^ CB: The first language was probably not just in bodily parts. The first people arranged their landscape syntactically. Or named specific trees and rocks, bolders. In the begining was the Word in the form of Landmarks. The whole of their land was a language of the concrete. The prevalence of sacred spots as a way of " For that matter they were astronomers. And mountain namers, hill namers, etc. The emphasis on Land as fundamental to preliterate culture comes through in the emphasis of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines on land recovery today. I wrote several papers on land recovery for the Yurok of Northwest California. The more general paper is "Indigenous Knowledge in Aboriginal Land Recovery" d So, the preliterate peoples were literate in terms of having a concrete writing system. Both movable stones, which remain, and no doubt moveable thousands of other objects which have dissolved, not been preserved like stones. And relatively immovable landmarks , and skymarks, like the sun, the moon, the stars. In sense, the Pyramids of Egypt and America are the final monuments to the stone age, obviously very complex cosmological monoliths, artificial mountains, artificial sacred geographical spots, b > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > [email protected] > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
