list,
I approve: languages and cultures are tools! They can be used as far as they are good for, but they don´t limit! Other tools are easily available for everybody, for Amele people too. Dyadic giving, m. a! They gave something away to the world, or they gave everything they could to a special person? Before missionaries arrived, and it worked?
Best, helmut
Jon, Dan, List,
Jon quoted Dan, then commented:
DE: By the way, predicates in natural languages can vary for cultural reasons. For example, "to give" in most languages is triadic, but it is dyadic in Amele of New Guinea (as I discuss in Language: The Cultural Tool).JAS: That is interesting, but I assume we can still say that the relation of giving is irreducibly triadic, regardless of how it is expressed in any particular language.
I certainly do assume that we can say "that the relation of giving is irreducibly triadic" and, this seems to me, to point again to the essential distinction between 'relation(ship)' and 'correlation' which Jon has been emphasizing in consideration of triadic relations. Perhaps this distinction also points to a difference in the subject matter of linguistics and semeiotic, whatever their overlaps may be.
In any event, the exchange between Dan and Jon reminded me of the peculiar case of the language of the Trobriand Islanders, one I'd learned about decades ago in a college course which included analyses of certain cultural and even conceptual differences expressed through language. The Trobriand Islanders language is especially interesting for several reasons.
The Trobriand peoples speak Kilivila, though various different dialects of it are spoken amongst each different tribe. It is an Austronesian language, although [it] has the distinction of having a complex system for classifying nouns.
In this regard and, for example, it would appear that Kilivila doesn't express 'causation' or, perhaps, one might say 'process', 'growth', etc. As the article quoted from would have it, there appear to be in some languages "non-lineal codifications of reality." As this appears as a characteristic of Kilivila, one reads:
Drawing upon earlier work earlier work by Bronisław Malinowski, Dorothy D. Lee's scholarly writings refer to "non-lineal codifications of reality". In such a linguistic system, the concept of linear progress of time, geometric shapes, and even conventional methods of description, are lost altogether or altered. In her example of a specific indigenous yam, Lee explains that when the yam moves from a state of sprouting through ripeness to over-ripeness, the name for each object in a specific state changes entirely - the description of the object at different states of development relates to wholly different perceptions of the object. Ripeness is considered a "defining ingredient" and thus once it becomes over-ripe, a yam is perceived as a new object altogether. The same perception pertains to time and geometric shapes.Lee, Dorothy D. B. (1950). Lineal and nonlineal codifications of reality. Psychosomatic Medicine march-april 1950. p. 89.
While, of course, in nature there is process, growth, change, development, ripening, decay, etc., apparently language does not necessarily need to reflect that fact. I should note that I have since read somewhat different analyses of Kilivila than Lee's, but I have not been able to quickly locate them.
Best,
Gary
Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
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On Sat, Apr 20, 2019 at 1:05 PM Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote:
Dan, List:DE: By the way, predicates in natural languages can vary for cultural reasons. For example, "to give" in most languages is triadic, but it is dyadic in Amele of New Guinea (as I discuss in Language: The Cultural Tool).That is interesting, but I assume we can still say that the relation of giving is irreducibly triadic, regardless of how it is expressed in any particular language. Do you disagree?DE: On another note, neurolinguistics research by Evelina Fedorenko and her colleagues at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department shows that language networks in the brain are built primarily around words/symbols, with syntax parasitic on words, which I independently predict in my book and recent work on the origin of language. Also Steve Piantadosi (Berkeley Psychology) has shown that all the memory needed for much of language is about 1.5 megabytes, a small amount, with the amount of memory required for syntax negligible, more evidence that symbols drive syntax.Could you please elaborate on what you mean by "syntax parasitic on words"? I am neither a linguist nor a cognitive scientist--and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night--but that interpretation of the evidence seems backwards. Consider this excerpt from the article about Piantadosi's research that you linked in a subsequent post.For example, when presented with the word "turkey," a young learner typically gathers bits of information by asking, "Is a turkey a bird? Yes, or no? Does a turkey fly? Yes, or no?" and so on, until grasping the full meaning of the word "turkey."The young learner in this example must already have mastered basic syntax in order to pose his/her questions in the first place, and then understand the responses--which help make the word "turkey" more determinate in his/her own mind, like adding Spots to a branching Line of Identity. This is presumably why symbols require far more memory than syntax--they have to be situated in relation to all other symbols, while the same syntax applies to a vast range of different circumstances, as the isomorphic Existential Graphs for the triadic relations of giving and determining reflect.Moreover, what do you make of the following comments by Peirce regarding the priority of syntax?CSP: Take the Proposition "Cain killed Abel." This is identically the same Proposition as "Abel was killed by Cain": It is only the grammatical dress that is different. Other things being equal, everybody will prefer the former. Why? Because it is simpler; but why is it simpler? Because in putting the cause before the effect, it in that respect diagrammatizes the truth. What are the Subjects of this Proposition. Cain, first: that is not only a Subject of the Proposition, but is the principal Subject of the Assertion which a historian would naturally make. But in the Proposition Cain and Abel are, as Subjects, on one footing precisely (or almost precisely, for Cain is preponderant in causality). But besides these, "killed" = committed murder upon, is a third Subject, since no study of the words alone, without extraneous experience, would enable the Ad[d]ressee to understand it. What, then, is left to serve as Predicate? Nothing but the flow of causation. It is true that we are more acquainted even with that in Experience. When we see a babe in its cradle bending its arms this way and that, while a smile of exultation plays upon its features, it is making acquaintance with the flow of causation. So acquaintance with the flow of causation so early as to make it familiar before speech is so far acquired that an assertion can be syntactically framed, and it is embodied in the syntax of every tongue. However, it is not because of this physiological fact, that it becomes proper to draw the line between Subjects and Predicate here; neither is it because of the psychical fact that human minds naturally think in a way broadly (i.e. a little) similar to the forms of syntax; nor is it even because of the metaphysical truth, that the order of syntax is the law of Time and of Becoming. This is proved by the facts, first, that it is necessary that the Reasonings by which we discover and defend the orders of Causation, of human thought, of time, and of becoming, themselves presuppose the recognition of the corresponding order in syntax; and secondly, by this, that it has not been the order [of] time, or Causation, or the structure of the human mind, nor human anatomy and physiology that have, any or all of them, determined that that ought to be the order of syntax that in fact ought to be so, but precisely the contrary, it is the fact that the order of Syntax ought to be as in fact it ought to be that has determined, first, Real Being and Time to take the same form, and then, that it should become natural to the mind and should be the pattern of physical action. (R 664:10-13; 1910 Nov 26-27)It seems to me--and Peirce, apparently--that another reason why syntax requires little memory is simply because it is relatively natural, generally reflecting "the flow of causation" that we discover long before we achieve competence in any language. By contrast, symbols are ultimately arbitrary, requiring the acquisition of myriad habits for even rudimentary employment in thought and communication.In any case, with Peirce I see the primary distinction here as being between subjects that denote Objects (as Semes) and continuous predicates that signify Interpretants (within Propositions). There is no limit to the potential number of different words or other symbols that we could devise and memorize to serve as the former, but only a handful of syntactical configurations are sufficient to express the latter, since they represent indecomposable logical relations. We can stipulate the proper linear sequence of words for this purpose, often supplemented by additional words; or we can adopt even more iconic Signs, such as Spots with certain arrangements of Pegs attached to other Spots by means of Lines, all scribed on a two-dimensional Sheet.Regards,Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USAProfessional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran LaymanOn Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 1:20 PM Dan Everett <[email protected]> wrote:The most common word order among the world's 7000+ languages is Sub Obj Verb. But I have worked on languages in the Amazon that are SOV, VSO, VOS, OSV, SVO, and OVS. I have written full grammars of two of them. A propositions can serve as predicates of higher propositions in some languages. Syntactic variation is intense.On another note, neurolinguistics research by Evelina Fedorenko and her colleagues at MIT's Brain and Cognitivie Sciences Department shows that language networks in the brain are built primarily around words/symbols, with syntax parasitic on words, which I independently predict in my book and recent work on the origin of language. Also Steve Piantadosi (Berkeley Psychology) has shown that all the memory needed for much of language is about 1.5 megabytes, a small amount, with the amount of memory required for syntax neglible, more evidence that symbols drive syntax.DanOn Apr 19, 2019, at 2:14 PM, Edwina Taborsky <[email protected]> wrote:Yes, and the location of the predicate in the sentence is also interesting. For example, in classical ancient Chinese, the verb was at the end [as it is in Latin]. I thought this implied that whatever was going on in the full sentence, i.e, subject and object, involved both as co-agents in the action. What was interesting is how this ancient Chinese format eventually gave way to the modern mode where the verb is between the subject and object.
Edwina
On Fri 19/04/19 1:42 PM , Dan Everett [email protected] sent:By the way, predicates in natural languages can vary for cultural reasons. For example, "to give" in most languages is triadic, but it is dyadic in Amele of New Guinea (as I discuss in Language: The Cultural Tool).Dan
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