Grammar/Vocabulary ??? (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

With respect, the argument may be correct to some extent, but it ignores the fact that pronunciations of words change over time and with geographical separation. E.g. the spelling of 'colour' may indicate a more rounded pronunciation of the end of the word, rather than a clipped pronunciation implied by 'color'. And if you listen to a Brit and an American pronouncing the word, the American pronunciation is more clipped. So the Brit pronunciation is not necessarily illogical. Along a similar vein, people often ask why there is an aitch in words like 'whatever' or 'why'. The reason is that until well into the 20th century, most people pronounced the aitch to some degree, and carefully spoken people still do. For example, in Brit english, 'whatever' carefully spoken sounds like 'wha-t-ever' whereas the more frequent pronunciation is more like 'wottever'.

In other instances, Brits tended to spell words following what they thought were the correct historical rules. This led them on more than one occasion up blind alleys - e.g. check on the spelling of 'admiral' if you have a spare five minutes.

And of course there are several spellings that English has been landed with thanks to the Dutch printers employed by Caxton. The best known of these is 'yacht' which makes perfect sense in Dutch, but was totally at variance with the Brit spelling of the time, which was 'yott' or a phonetic variant.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

andrew markworthy wrote (post #261):



I'm curious, which people ask that? Are they Americans? Many upper MidWest dialects here have lost the distinction between voiceless "wh", as in whet, and voiced "w", as in wet. That is, I believe, how wacky and wacko, and wacked became au currant. They were popularized by people of prominence who didn't have the voiceless wh-sound in their dialect(s), even though the words must be surely be derived from the verb to whack (as in 'knock or displace violently').

Some Southern U.S. dialects go the other way and get rid of the voiced "w". (Ever notice on "ST: The Next Generation that Worf (Michael Dorn) always says "wheapons systems"? I've also heard things like "whensday" for Wednesday.)

The loss of the distinction often leads to some of the common misspellings that we see
e.g., for , for , etc.

Of course, in Old English (OE) orthography these were spelled more "sensibly" -, since the voiceless [h]-sound precedes the rounding of the lips to make a "w" (so, e.g., for etc.).

But, as I've been saying, conventions (and, therefore, standards) change, and the world moves on.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Because if they're not, the question doesn't matter?

Actually, the first time I read the question was in an American academic journal as a way of introducing an argument connected to a theory of grapheme-phoneme matching (happy to explain in immense, brain-numbing detail if you're really really desperate, but basically, letter - word sound matching; it's a very important topic in some areas of psychology). And since then I've seen the question pop up several times in Brit and US publications.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

andrew markworthy wrote (post #263):


Oh, you are being waaaaay "too kind", as they say. Chomsky = Chumpsky. If you believe even half of what Chomsky says, as his followers do ("Linguists have developed a mathematically rigorous set of definitions, a hierarchy of syntactical complexity, that governs the process of how humans create and understand utterances . . . . These rules govern how to properly express yourself - how to structure your phrases and sentences." ([ahem]!--- except that they don't "work" a good deal of the time and have to be heavily "revised" every five years to clear out the previous five years' heaps of scholarly bullshit)), then welcome to the cult.

In fact, the emperor has no clothes.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

KurtEP wrote (post #250):


There's far more to it than that. Apparently, Socrates's inquiries on wisdom and truth reached into Athenian religious affairs and that is what led to charges against him (pederasty, sacrilege). As he puts it in The Apology: "Socrates is condemned to death for belief in gods in which the city does not believe."

 

[andrew markworthy]

I can still remember the withering look I got from my tutor when as a callow undergraduate, having had the basics of transformational grammar explained to me, asking 'yes, but isn't it all a bit obvious?'. I still think the basics of it sound like one step on from the old fashioned school exercise of parsing sentences, but maybe I'm too stupid to appreciate the subtleties of it.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Perhaps if you had been asked to take what you had learned and teach a computer to read, you might have paid closer attention to the subtleties.

 

[andrew markworthy]

I never got past how computers do letter recognition, decided it was way too difficult, and decided instead to look at how phonics influences chidren's early reading and spelling skills. I got my doctorate out of it, so I ain't complaining.

 

[JeremyErwin]

A while back, I was trying to learn JavaCC, and desperately supplemented the somewhat poor documentation with articles on parsers. Most of those articles mentioned Chomsky at least in passing, usually in connection with the Chomskian hierarchy (Context Free, Context Sensitive, etc etc)

 

[Rex Bachmann]

(post #264):
What the hell was I thinking?!?

, , and ARE (!) minimal phonemic pairs, since they contrast only in the initial phoneme, though they aren't minimal graphemic pairs.

A matching something like : : would have been a better illustration of nonminimal rhyming pairs.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I had just been amused by the fact that you had used the word "turd."

I never did get a response to my question about your triple dashes though... :frowning:

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Adam Lenhardt, I would thank you for such an effortful and laborious response. Your report on the "deaf language(s)" is informative and interesting.

However, I have to take issue with some of your other declarations, which, to my mind, are mere rehearsals of previous posters' highly questionable, if not downright erroneous, comments, which I had hoped (against hope, apparently) to have effectively put to rest in post #224.

(post #256):



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. . ., body language and facial expressions do play a much larger role in ASL (and other signed languages) than in verbal languages. Sarcasm, for instance, has to be conveyed entirely through facial expression and body language since the concept of tone of voice does not exist.






First of all, let me admit my own bias. Unlike some others around here, I have a problem with use of "language" (as in "body language and facial expressions") to refer to non-verbal (that is, nonvocal/nongraphic) communication. I find it okay as a metaphor, but as an exact parallel to spoken/written communication I find it shaky and find myself dubious.

Some have questioned whether animals "have language". Though not a settled issue, because no one has yet come up with a globally acceptable definition of the term, the fact is that even certain animals do have vocal communications of various kinds. Birds have calls, chirps, songs, and the like. Whales have "songs". Canines and felines have repetoires of growls, roars, barks, meows, whines, etc. Apes have various screeches, calls, grunts, etc. I don't know what the evidence is that any of these convey factual information, as opposed to emotions (DANGER, HUNGER, SUBMISSION, etc.) and the like. Maybe someone could enlighten us?

Honey bees supposedly "dance" to indicate to their hive mates the sources of nectar or pollen, but that is not what I'd call a "language". Gestures are subject to much cultural interpretation. If someone "gives you the [middle] finger" you may know it's meant as a (deadly) insult but can you translate it into specific words?

Some would argue that imagery per se is not true "language" (parallel to spoken language) and that pictography (images strung together as "narrative") is not true writing, since, although ideas may be conveyed, real "words" (human language) are not. Ideography is very borderline, and qualifies as "writing" to the extent that it ties in with logography, syllabary, or phonetic writing in mixed systems. (The Chinese system is mixed. Egyptian and Mayan Hieroglyphs are mixed. So is ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform. Heck, our system is mixed as well. We use symbols for words at times, e.g., for "one" for "and", etc.)

But, it seems from what you say that (Western) "sign languages" have "gestemes", an inventory of stereotyped gestures that bear contrastive conceptual meanings---but "no nouns"?---as well as some being used to represent alphabetic characters. I guess with those features I can accept the idea of "gestural language".

How, by the way, do educated deaf people from cultures where tonemics ("tones of voice" distinguish "words" from each other: má, mà, mâ, etc.) characterizes the local---[ahem]---spoken languages (e.g., the Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) or many native West African languages) make out with "sign language"? No native "deaf language"? Only European models???

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For this reason, Deaf people with their hands tied behind their back can still express themselves more effectively than hearing people can gagged.





I think that's a mighty big claim. "Express themselves more effectively" how?


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. . . we evolved to communicate through speech and hearing.





Yes. Yes, we did.



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. . . if we had evolved to this point without ears, I believe conversational language would have developed anyway. Developed, in fact, to the same level of complexity and sophistication currently enjoyed by contemporary spoken and signed languages. I think written language would also probably have developed, but it would probably be more along the lines of Egyptian hyroglyphics than the highly efficient 26-letter Latin alphabet we enjoy today. I say this because phonemes are based around sounds and do not exist, in my experience, with signed language.





[Uh-huh] . . . .

Brian Perry wrote (post #251):


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. . . . from a practical standpoint, it is the ability to put ideas into permanent written form that allowed humans to break the limits of learning solely from oral tradition.

But then again, perhaps reading and writing became so important to our development simply because the printing press was invented before radio and television. In other words, the primary benefit of writing to mankind seems to be the ability to rapidly expose one person's thoughts to thousands or millions of other people (both current and future generations).





But that's only a very recent occurrence (and has been eclipsed exponentially still by the "power" of voice and image over electronic media). Writing existed for thousands of years and very few of the people alive were directly affected by its existence. It's only by sheer luck that many millenia-old writings, even those carved in stone or metal, survived for us to have the benefit of much of the knowledge or many of the insights of those who went before us. Before the 1890s, for example, moderns didn't know that there had been a powerful and vast "Hittite" empire in the mountainous areas of eastern Turkey during the first half and part of the second half of the 2nd millenium B.C.E. "Hittite"---actually a misnomer by modern scholars; they called themselves "Nessites"---was a name known mostly through a couple of Bible mentions. And then the vast archives at Boghazköi were unearthed, and we now have a huge fund of cuneiform (and Hittite hieroglyphic) texts that renders not only one but up to four (related) new (as in, "previously unknown") Indo-European languages, plus at least two non-Indo-European languages, with associated (pseudo)historical, folkloric, religious, or mythological texts. Sheer luck (and a lot of archaeological perseverance). By contrast, we still have, to my knowledge, no texts from ancient Troy, located at the other end of the Anatolian peninsula, despite its massive architectural remains and participation in a thriving Aegean civilization (although it has been indirectly deduced that it, too, spoke a language related to "Hittite"). Nevertheless, one should ponder on the significance of the lack of text remains from such an "advanced" (for its time and place) society and how ephemeral that "written word" can be if the media on which it is recorded are lost, buried, hidden, or destroyed.


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But if that proliferation of ideas had somehow been possible via an electronic broadcast medium prior to the invention of the printing press, perhaps things would have turned out much differently.





If early man had found a preëlectronic technique of capturing sound, including the human voice, on, say, wax or clay impressions and reproducing that sound and preserving those impressions, who knows whether that would have at least dulled the incentives for the development of much of writing, esp. the clunky ideographic, logographic, and pre-syllabic/preälphabetic forms of it?

(post #232):


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. . . I think it is safe to say that without the written language, it's scary to think of how far less we would have progressed as a species.





We'll never know, now, will we? We don't know---and can't know---what possible adaptations might have substituted for writing systems.

It's like that line from Supernova (1999): "What if they'd never crucified Christ?---but they did!"

(post #251):


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I'm not positive about this, but I would guess that after a relatively young age, a person's vocabulary is increased mostly through reading and not listening. In addition, higher level learning (math, etc.) is greatly dependent on the visual --i.e., written--aspects of the "language" such as shapes, equations, etc.





I'd take another guess, if I were you. Of course, it depends on what kind of "vocabulary" you're talking about. Have you heard today's American young people speak? Have you ever really listened to what so many of them talk about? (I'm talking primarily, but not exclusively, about the white middle class here.) That vocabulary---much less the subject matter---wasn't gotten through any reading. Not to suggest it isn't heavily biassed for comedic effect, but, if the sampling of people paraded on the "Jaywalking"-feature of Jay Leno's Tonight Show is anywhere near representative, then the average education level of today's young (and some middle-aged) adults is not very high; nor is the vocabulary very deep. As for the educated elite, which is what you seem to be talking about, who knows? Do these people have much general "learned" knowledge about the world outside of their occupational specialties? My impression is that they don't. ("'Sixteenth president'? Uh--Uh, duh . . . . Carter???")


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However, much like spoken language before the King James Bible, it [sign language] varied wildly from region to region.





I don't know what you're trying to claim here. If the premise is that, somehow, language spoken after the promulgation of the King James Bible (which is actually based on the Wycliff Bible and whose language is older than the promulgation of the standard edition by at least a century, and probably more)---if it is that spoken English "varied less wildly from region to region" after said promulgation, then you've got another "think" coming to you.

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Because sign language lacked a lexicon, it could not be formalized.





Now, how was it a language if it "lacked a lexicon"? What does it mean for a "language" to "lack a lexicon"?


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. . . the man who says "puh-day-dah" can still understand the man who says "poe-tate-toh" only because they are both working from a common lexicon.





And how do you define "lexicon"? How does one have a language without a "lexicon"? The lexicon is what maps onto the reälia, that is, real-world content. In other words, you have to have something to talk (communicate) about before you even need to start to "converse" (in whatever form). And then you need something that will convey that object of your thoughts/perception into active (linguistic) communication. It seems to me that that is what a lexicon is.


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Dictionaries are merely compilations of observed conversational language. In this sense, Noah Webster did the same thing that l’Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée did: he observed conversational language in practice, compiled it and formalized it.






Actually they compile many a nonconversational vocable. Try going through Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary and you will find huge numbers of so-called "obsolete" vocables or "obsolete" meanings to many a well used vocable. Many of these were Latinate vocabulary items (or vocables) introduced to the language solely in scholarly or literary writing, never apparently used in the spoken language, and not even catching on in scholarly circles (hence, their obsolescence).

Here one observes the elitist hypocrisy of ignoring and/or deprecating unfavored vocabulary ("four-letter words", slang", "patois", "jargon", etc.) on the pretext of its being too current and "ephemeral", even as words that have never even been "real words" in regular use in the language have gained permanent entry to the "official list" of English vocabulary, due chiefly to their Latinate pedigree.

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That being said, such formalization is a key milestone in the development of a language. It allows a language to extend beyond the limitations of mere geography. This is why the OED or M-W dictionaries, though nothing more than published arbitrary snapshots of the English language as it existed at that moment in time, are worthy of some reverence.






Yeah, well, your whole "formalization"-bit betrays the bias, which is taught by the system we have, in favor of the written word, as if the OED's or Merriam-Webster's---or, for that matter, Strunk-&-White's---saying "it's so" makes it so. (And by extension, if it's not there or it's denied there, "it ain't so".) Not valid, as I've been trying the point out all along.


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The "sounding out" phase of acquiring written language obviously does not exist in natural signed languages like ASL that lack phonemes. However, the process is the same.








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When we say the word word, do we mean that "string of sounds" or that "string of letters"? . . . . in the vast majority of cases, which has come first, the "string of sounds" or the corresponding "string of letters"?





I would argue that the "string of sounds" is the "string of letters", since the letters of the Latin alphabet (and basic combinations of those letters, like "ch" for the chuh[/u] sound) represent phonemes which are sounds. This is why I think a written signed language developed without a verbal inheritance would be logographic (like Chinese kanji) rather than phonographic or orthographic.






Do you understand the concept of the phoneme? I'm not clear that you do. There's a difference between phones (human speech sounds, of which there are an estimated 100,000 distinct ones in all the world's languages) and phonemes, the small, somewhat arbitrary, and divergent selection of human speech sounds out of that total that each language actually exploits to convey contrastive meaning (e.g., the distinction between, say, English [p] and English [b, which is voicing, in minimal pairs such as pat and bat). The hearing child learns the phonemes of his language by learning vocabulary (which may be augmented in the classroom) and contextual speech-patterns at home.

Okay, given your statement, let me ask you this---and be honest (with yourself!) as to your first, unfiltered answer: Is there OR is there NOT an "e" in vine? In pale? In love? In French bonne? Is there a "w" in French oui? In English sword? How about two? Is there a "c" in victuals? An "l" in walk or balk or (s)talk? What about half or salve? Is there a "z" in Spanish zorro?

What is the "string of sounds" in each of the following: staple, clothes, road, bear, main, spawn, flaccid, interest?



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The constraining force of formal language keeps regional variation from growing too unbearably great.





Oh, really? Tell me how. And tell me how "having a common lexicon"---however you define it---kept "regionalisms" in the Roman Empire from ending up as Italian, Sardinian, Catalan, Provençal, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc. (i.e., all the various Romance languages)? Tell me how the "constraining force of formal language" (in this case, medieval Latin) kept the "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation" (the "First Reich"---which, as the Germans love to point out, was not "holy", not "Roman", not "German", and hardly an "empire") from becoming France, Germany, the low countries, Denmark, parts of northern Italy, parts of Poland, etc., with all their divergent languages and dialects? How?!?

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An exhaustive record can accumulate the vastness of spoken language, . . . .





With factors of billions of utterances spoken every day, no it can't. That's a logistical impossibility and no desideratum, either. (Do you know how much garbage people really talk?)


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. . . but it will be out of date immediately upon publication and it will fail to take into account all of the non-verbal indications which are most pronounced in a signed language but are central to any conversational language.





You should see the writings of William Labov, who did much work (with mixed results) on "nonstandard" spoken Englishes(!) in American, mostly urban, dialects over the course of a generation.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

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Originally Posted by Rex Bachmann
Adam Lenhardt, I would thank you for such an effortful and laborious response. Your report on the "deaf language(s)" is informative and interesting.




Thanks. I went much later that night than I had any intention of doing.
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First of all, let me admit my own bias. Unlike some others around here, I have a problem with use of "language" (as in "body language and facial expressions") to refer to non-verbal (that is, nonvocal/nongraphic) communication. I find it okay as a metaphor, but as an exact parallel to spoken/written communication I find it shaky and find myself dubious.




The use in regards to ASL is different specifically because the "body language and facial expressions" have a degree of formality to them. That is, the sign for "sad" doesn't merely involve looking sad, but a specific archetype/exaggeration of sad. There isn't the same degree of formality with the body language/facial expressions as there is with the hand signing or a formal spoken language, but as a component of communication that is repeatable and predictable I have to consider it a part of the language (as do sign language linguists). The degree to which body language/facial expressions utilized in employing spoken language is part of language (ie. the stereotypical Italian gentleman) is, I believe, much more debatable.
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Some have questioned whether animals "have language". Though not a settled issue, because no one has yet come up with a globally acceptable definition of the term, the fact is that even certain animals do have vocal communications of various kinds. Birds have calls, chirps, songs, and the like. Whales have "songs". Canines and felines have repetoires of growls, roars, barks, meows, whines, etc. Apes have various screeches, calls, grunts, etc. I don't know what the evidence is that any of these convey factual information, as opposed to emotions (DANGER, HUNGER, SUBMISSION, etc.) and the like. Maybe someone could enlighten us?




I'm not sure either. I know that many animals are able to communicate (the cat whines when it's hungry, claws at the door when it needs to go out) but I would judge the standard for language (as opposed to simply communication) at a much higher level. For instance, parrots have the vocal capacity to replicate human languages, but it'd be hard to argue that mimicking back "Polly want a cracker?" is an active engagement with language.
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Honey bees supposedly "dance" to indicate to their hive mates the sources of nectar or pollen, but that is not what I'd call a "language". Gestures are subject to much cultural interpretation. If someone "gives you the [middle] finger" you may know it's meant as a (deadly) insult but can you translate it into specific words?




Yes. "Fuck you!"

...I'd still argue that's not language, though.
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Some would argue that imagery per se is not true "language" (parallel to spoken language) and that pictography (images strung together as "narrative") is not true writing, since, although ideas may be conveyed, real "words" (human language) are not. Ideography is very borderline, and qualifies as "writing" to the extent that it ties in with logography, syllabary, or phonetic writing in mixed systems. (The Chinese system is mixed. Egyptian and Mayan Hieroglyphs are mixed. So is ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform. Heck, our system is mixed as well. We use symbols for words at times, e.g., for "one" for "and", etc.)




To my mind, that's an argument of percision and degree. Two translations might not resolve into an identical result, but both translations would tell the same story, I think. Within pictography, for instance, you can have a string of icons that lay out a story bouncing from idea to idea. But perhaps the way the pictographs are presented and the order in which they are placed allows for greater certainty and depth of expression than DEER+HUNTERS+DEAD DEER+FEAST.
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But, it seems from what you say that (Western) "sign languages" have "gestemes", an inventory of stereotyped gestures that bear contrastive conceptual meanings---but "no nouns"?---as well as some being used to represent alphabetic characters. I guess with those features I can accept the idea of "gestural language".




Not "no nouns", per say, but no proper nouns. For instance, there is a sign for "city", but someone in Melbourne would probably fingerspell a city outside of his region. Within a given region, the local vernacular with adapt a sign so that that common name doesn't have to be spelled out each and every time. I lived in Brighton, MA when I was studying sign language. A signer from Wisconsin would probably fingerspell B-R-I-G-H-T-O-N, but a local would know that the sign branched off from the sign for "bright." On the other hand, the sign for "Boston" involves moving the sign for the fingerspelled "B" up and down.
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How, by the way, do educated deaf people from cultures where tonemics ("tones of voice" distinguish "words" from each other: má, mà, mâ, etc.) characterizes the local---[ahem]---spoken languages (e.g., the Chinese languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) or many native West African languages) make out with "sign language"? No native "deaf language"? Only European models???




I haven't really had any exposure to non-Western sign languages, so I can't tell you from my personal experience. However a little research online turned up an answer in the case of Chinese Sign Language (as diverse as spoken Chinese languages, with the Shanghai Sign Language most prominent) There are a few key differences between Western sign language and Chinese Sign Languages. First, there is no fingerspelling because Chinese writing systems are syllabaries instead of alphabets. Second, many of the signs seek to approximate the shape and form of the written Chinese word instead of representing the object, action or idea itself. Regularly signing a syllabary is much less laborious than trying to manually sign an alphabet.
But to answer your question, the way the Chinese sign languages handle tonemics is with a system of "blinks" that are used in coordination with with the hand signs. Turning your head one way might convey one tone of voice, whereas squinting instead might convey another.
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I think that's a mighty big claim. "Express themselves more effectively" how?




Imagine being in a country where you didn't speak the native language and could never achieve complete mastery of it. A large portion of your day, then, would be spent communicating with people who you don't share a language with. Much like American tourists in a foreign, non-Anglosphere country, they have to resort to gesturing. When you gesture all of the time, you get really really good at conveying yourself without language.
Much of those skills carry over from the role that body language and facial expression play in signed language.
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But that's only a very recent occurrence (and has been eclipsed exponentially still by the "power" of voice and image over electronic media). Writing existed for thousands of years and very few of the people alive were directly affected by its existence. It's only by sheer luck that many millenia-old writings, even those carved in stone or metal, survived for us to have the benefit of much of the knowledge or many of the insights of those who went before us. Before the 1890s, for example, moderns didn't know that there had been a powerful and vast "Hittite" empire in the mountainous areas of eastern Turkey during the first half and part of the second half of the 2nd millenium B.C.E. "Hittite"---actually a misnomer by modern scholars; they called themselves "Nessites"---was a name known mostly through a couple of Bible mentions. And then the vast archives at Boghazköi were unearthed, and we now have a huge fund of cuneiform (and Hittite hieroglyphic) texts that renders not only one but up to four (related) new (as in, "previously unknown") Indo-European languages, plus at least two non-Indo-European languages, with associated (pseudo)historical, folkloric, religious, or mythological texts. Sheer luck (and a lot of archaeological perseverance). By contrast, we still have, to my knowledge, no texts from ancient Troy, located at the other end of the Anatolian peninsula, despite its massive architectural remains and participation in a thriving Aegean civilization (although it has been indirectly deduced that it, too, spoke a language related to "Hittite"). Nevertheless, one should ponder on the significance of the lack of text remains from such an "advanced" (for its time and place) society and how ephemeral that "written word" can be if the media on which it is recorded are lost, buried, hidden, or destroyed.




Written language makes spoken language more uniform and efficient. However, I don't disagree that language can exist without writing. Sign language employs fingerspelling only because it evolved from within a literate culture. If the whole world had always been Deaf, our system of naming would probably be completely different.
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I don't know what you're trying to claim here. If the premise is that, somehow, language spoken after the promulgation of the King James Bible (which is actually based on the Wycliff Bible and whose language is older than the promulgation of the standard edition by at least a century, and probably more)---if it is that spoken English "varied less wildly from region to region" after said promulgation, then you've got another "think" coming to you.




I'm saying that everyone working off the same text of a given work -- especially a work as important and central as the Bible -- has an inherently standardizing effect. I'm not, however, saying that the Bible wiped out regional variation.
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Now, how was it a language if it "lacked a lexicon"? What does it mean for a "language" to "lack a lexicon"?




I mean a standard set of agreed upon words and system of grammar. Before Épée opened his school, a given signed lexicon would exist solely between one Dead signer and another, limited to a vocabulary that ecapsulated their limited sphere of understanding. Both parties in that lexicon would likely have other lexicons with other signers that overlapped significantly but to varying degrees. Instead of varying from region to region, signed language varied from street to street.
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And how do you define "lexicon"? How does one have a language without a "lexicon"? The lexicon is what maps onto the reälia, that is, real-world content. In other words, you have to have something to talk (communicate) about before you even need to start to "converse" (in whatever form). And then you need something that will convey that object of your thoughts/perception into active (linguistic) communication. It seems to me that that is what a lexicon is.




Exactly, with the caveat in my previous post that it be shared beyond two speakers/conversers.
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Actually they compile many a nonconversational vocable. Try going through Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary and you will find huge numbers of so-called "obsolete" vocables or "obsolete" meanings to many a well used vocable. Many of these were Latinate vocabulary items (or vocables) introduced to the language solely in scholarly or literary writing, never apparently used in the spoken language, and not even catching on in scholarly circles (hence, their obsolescence).




Well I guess it depends on your definition of "conversational" would scholarly writing, in so much as it serves to foster an exchange of ideas and contrary points of view, be considered conversational?
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Here one observes the elitist hypocrisy of ignoring and/or deprecating unfavored vocabulary ("four-letter words", slang", "patois", "jargon", etc.) on the pretext of its being too current and "ephemeral", even as words that have never even been "real words" in regular use in the language have gained permanent entry to the "official list" of English vocabulary, due chiefly to their Latinate pedigree.




Well, you need to pad out Scrabble and crossword puzzles from somewhere.

Seriously though, most of the obsolete words are the first to go in any pocket or abridged dictionary. Every now and again I'll come across a word that is only listed in the OED, for instance, with the last date in its etymology being the 14th century or some such thing.
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Yeah, well, your whole "formalization"-bit betrays the bias, which is taught by the system we have, in favor of the written word, as if the OED's or Merriam-Webster's---or, for that matter, Strunk-&-White's---saying "it's so" makes it so. (And by extension, if it's not there or it's denied there, "it ain't so".) Not valid, as I've been trying the point out all along.




Isn't it that very system against which you rail that makes it so? Because every English teacher tells his or her class that Elements of Style is the bedrock foundation of English grammar, a majority of those with a vested interested in the language adopt it as such. As each class of them graduates and moves into the publishing, business and journalism world, they bring Strunk and White with them in their coat pocket. Because they follow the rules of Element of Style the legitimacy of the book for future generations of writers and readers is reinforced. Nothing about that makes the book particularly special (although it's my personal opinion that that thin little paperback is very special indeed) except that it was in the right place at the right time to achieve the critical mass necessary to make it the de facto reference.
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Do you understand the concept of the phoneme? I'm not clear that you do. There's a difference between phones (human speech sounds, of which there are an estimated 100,000 distinct ones in all the world's languages) and phonemes, the small, somewhat arbitrary, and divergent selection of human speech sounds out of that total that each language actually exploits to convey contrastive meaning (e.g., the distinction between, say, English [p] and English [b, which is voicing, in minimal pairs such as pat and bat). The hearing child learns the phonemes of his language by learning vocabulary (which may be augmented in the classroom) and contextual speech-patterns at home.

Okay, given your statement, let me ask you this---and be honest (with yourself!) as to your first, unfiltered answer: Is there OR is there NOT an "e" in vine? In pale? In love? In French bonne? Is there a "w" in French oui? In English sword? How about two? Is there a "c" in victuals? An "l" in walk or balk or (s)talk? What about half or salve? Is there a "z" in Spanish zorro?




This speaks to the imperfection of phonemic orthography in regards to English -- which borrows liberally from other languages when mapping graphemes to phonemes. "Jorge" would probably be spelled "Horhay" if it were a native English word uncorrupted by Latin or Germanic influence.
It's possible that I'm simply not advanced enough in signed language to be able to break it down into a definited set of phonemes, removed and set apart from the vast possibilities of non-verbal communication.
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Oh, really? Tell me how. And tell me how "having a common lexicon"---however you define it---kept "regionalisms" in the Roman Empire from ending up as Italian, Sardinian, Catalan, Provençal, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc. (i.e., all the various Romance languages)? Tell me how the "constraining force of formal language" (in this case, medieval Latin) kept the "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation" (the "First Reich"---which, as the Germans love to point out, was not "holy", not "Roman", not "German", and hardly an "empire") from becoming France, Germany, the low countries, Denmark, parts of northern Italy, parts of Poland, etc., with all their divergent languages and dialects? How?!?




The constraining force of formal language is inherently limited by the penetration of literacy in a given society. The less literate a society, the weaker the constraining force of written language. The onset of near universal literacy is a relatively modern development. Which isn't to say that events and circumstances don't expand a lexicon -- most of America's contributions to the English language are a result of westward expansion.
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With factors of billions of utterances spoken every day, no it can't. That's a logistical impossibility and no desideratum, either. (Do you know how much garbage people really talk?)




A logistical impossibility, but not a theoretical impossibility. I agree, however, that there is no necessity for such an exhaustive record since so much on the fringes of language are not universally applicable -- jargon, for instance.
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You should see the writings of William Labov, who did much work (with mixed results) on "nonstandard" spoken Englishes(!) in American, mostly urban, dialects over the course of a generation.




Once my life settles down a bit, i'll be sure to check into him.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

andrew markworthy wrote (post #266)


I neglected to point out in post #200 that one reason you may have encountered this “annoyed” reäction from Americans is that here, in SAE and many of the spoken dialects as well, have got has pretty much come to mean ‘to have, be in possession of’ versus have gotten which for us serves still as the perfect of get. Of course, in the old days in school we were taught not use have got for ‘have’, but, like almost all other formal, socially dictated rules, that went nowhere.

So, in SAE "I've got it" = "I have it", while "I've gotten it" = "I've obtained/received it". ("It" could, for example, be a cold, in which case "I've got a cold" will mean "I am now suffering from a cold. I have it" (or, better put, "it has me"), the expression of a state I find myself in in the present because of a past process), whereas "I've gotten a cold" will mean "I've caught a cold", the expression of a process begun in the past still having effect in the present). Of course, we also use "got" by itself with a "pretero-present" sense. For instance, in the sentence "I got mine", it is often impossible to tell whether the speaker is referring to a past action or a present state of possession.

The actual solution that used(?) to be proposed to students was not to use the "Anglo-Saxonism" get at all, or at least not whenever possible; always substitute another (i.e., a Gallic or Latinate polysyllabic) verb (receive, obtain, attain, etc.), instead ((Anglo-)Norman influence). Also a no-go.

 

[JeremyErwin]

.

Whew... italics and bolding are in the original-- I tend to shy away from recklessly changing the styles of fonts within my own writings, preferring to let my readers infer tonality from context.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Adam Lenhardt wrote (post #274):


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Some would argue that imagery per se is not true "language" (parallel to spoken language) and that pictography (images strung together as "narrative") is not true writing, since, although ideas may be conveyed, real "words" (human language) are not. Ideography is very borderline, and qualifies as "writing" to the extent that it ties in with logography, syllabary, or phonetic writing in mixed systems. (The Chinese system is mixed. Egyptian and Mayan Hieroglyphs are mixed. So is ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform. Heck, our system is mixed as well. We use symbols for words at times, e.g., for "one" for "and", etc.)





To my mind, that's an argument of percision and degree. Two translations might not resolve into an identical result, but both translations would tell the same story, I think. Within pictography, for instance, you can have a string of icons that lay out a story bouncing from idea to idea. But perhaps the way the pictographs are presented and the order in which they are placed allows for greater certainty and depth of expression than DEER+HUNTERS+DEAD DEER+FEAST.





You're confusing (and confounding) translation and interpretation (when oral) or decipherment (when written). "Translation"---a good one, at least---, which is what I'm talking about, is as precise and as close to the original as can be linguistically idiomatically rendered. Decipherment/interpretation, on the other hand, is only about getting the "idea" of the linguistic communication across without worry about the precise linguistics of the rendering. That precision you speak of is exactly what makes a "translation" a translation. (Note that there are two different professions, e.g., with the UN or various governmental foreign-affairs agencies, based on bilingual abilities, one is called "interpretor" (for dealing with instaneous spoken communication), the other "translator" (for dealing with studied, written communication). The two are not the same.)

A careful translation sticks to trying to render, in as idiomatically clear a way possible, what the original speaker has said, whereäs an interpretation tries to render what the original speaker/writer has meant. An interpretation at any level is just that, and with it comes the danger of extrapolation, investing a linguistic rendering with one's own inferences, biasses, and prejudices.


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I think that's a mighty big claim. "Express themselves more effectively" how?




Imagine being in a country where you didn't speak the native language and could never achieve complete mastery of it. A large portion of your day, then, would be spent communicating with people who you don't share a language with. Much like American tourists in a foreign, non-Anglosphere country, they have to resort to gesturing. When you gesture all of the time, you get really really good at conveying yourself without language.

Much of those skills carry over from the role that body language and facial expression play in signed language.





The problem with your statement remains that "effectiveness of expression" is still properly gauged in the mind of each experiencer. You're making a general statement that accords to whose experience, exactly? Yours? Those of "experts in sign language"? Whose? And which criteria and whose are used to come to this conclusion? It's much too broad a claim and you give no factual indication of what it is based upon. Saying it's so don't make it so.


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Written language makes spoken language more uniform and efficient.





Evidence? Evidence? Evidence? Again, an overly broad statement, in my opinion. Having a written-language standard may---but need not---make for smoother communications among an elite that deals regularly with same, which is not the same as what you're claiming. (Remember---mantra-time---, the spoken language IS the language.)

And "universal" literacy, is a goal, not a fact. (The rate and levels of adult "functional illiteracy" in the USA are much higher than our officials have ever been, or are yet now, prepared to admit. They wouldn't dare.)


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If the whole world had always been Deaf, our system of naming would probably be completely different.




If there were no "speaking", there would be no "naming", in the proper sense. There might be some kind of "designation"---notice that has -- in it---, but no true naming. (It's like in the sci-fi world, where they tell you what aliens who never speak "call" themselves. In the ST:TNG-episode "Tin Man", Data tells his crewmates that the giant living conchshell floating in space "calls" itself "Gomtuu". Well, to form such a phonetic string, one would have to have vocal communication, which it doesn't (no matter how intelligent it may be). It may be convenient for humans to call it "Gomtuu", but its "calling" itself such without speech is scarcely possible. [ugh!] :frowning:Writers not thinking about the implications of their own imaginations.

)


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I'm saying that everyone working off the same text of a given work -- especially a work as important and central as the Bible -- has an inherently standardizing effect.





"Standardizing effect"? Yes, for Bible sermons, but no, for the language in general (even the literary language).


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Now, how was it a language if it "lacked a lexicon"? What does it mean for a "language" to "lack a lexicon"?




I mean a standard set of agreed upon words and system of grammar.





Lexicon is a mental list of the totality of lexical items (called lexemes, the building blocks of any language) that speakers of a given language system can tap into to communicate ideas to each other. It is not Merriam-Webster's. It is not the OED. (Note: no speaker in any large speaker community has automatic access to the entire list, since old "words" constantly die out and new "words" are regularly introduced within living, vibrant speech communities.) The "grammar" is, to further the metaphor, the mortar, that makes the conceptualizers cohere. If it lacks a "lexicon", it cannot be a language, by definition.



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Actually they compile many a nonconversational vocable. . . Many of these were Latinate vocabulary items . . . [that were] never apparently used in the spoken language . . . .





Well I guess it depends on your definition of "conversational" would scholarly writing, in so much as it serves to foster an exchange of ideas and contrary points of view, be considered conversational?





No. The first "reading" (i.e., interpretation) of conversational is as a description in opposition to formal. By your loose use of the word, any speech (or writing) can be designated "conversational", while "formalities" are actually reserved for special occasions.


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. . . every English teacher tells his or her class that Elements of Style is the bedrock foundation of English grammar, a majority of those with a vested interested in the language adopt it as such.





Again, the nonsensical elitist stuff. Every native speaker has a "vested interest" in his own language, by definition; as much, in fact, as every other native speaker.


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As each class of them graduates and moves into the publishing, business and journalism world, they bring Strunk and White with them in their coat pocket. Because they follow the rules of Element of Style the legitimacy of the book for future generations of writers and readers is reinforced. . . . the book . . . was in the right place at the right time to achieve the critical mass necessary to make it the de facto reference.





I don't understand your point with this. Do you really understand how small a percentage of the user population of English speakers you're talking about? The vast majority of speakers---that is, by the hundreds of millions---has/have never heard of "Strunk-&-White" and never will, and, the way things seem to be going with the language, won't be much influenced indirectly, much less directly, by it, no matter what its adherents care to think.


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Okay, given your statement, let me ask you this---and be honest (with yourself!) as to your first, unfiltered answer: Is there OR is there NOT an "e" in vine? In pale? In love? In French bonne? Is there a "w" in French oui? In English sword? How about two? Is there a "c" in victuals? An "l" in walk or balk or (s)talk? What about half or salve? Is there a "z" in Spanish zorro?





This speaks to the imperfection of phonemic orthography in regards to English -- which borrows liberally from other languages when mapping graphemes to phonemes. "Jorge" would probably be spelled "Horhay" if it were a native English word uncorrupted by Latin or Germanic influence.





Again, you use the word "phonemic" with rather dubious relevance to the point at hand. While the "English" (i.e., Roman) alphabet does indeed have phonemic features, people learn to read outloud phonically---that is by sounding out words according to spellings---, rather than phonemically. (If this were Cherokee or some other such language to which that alphabet had been adapted, then maybe true phonemicism would be an issue in learning to read.) As I said before, the phonemics (or phonology) of English is learned by native speakers when they first acquire speech, not from displays in a book, or those on a card or chalkboard.

As far as mapping foreign spellings to English pronunciations is concerned, that isn't really the issue either. (You've all but sidestepped the real issue.) love is a native word, as are bone, time, mane, stare, and these could have been substituted for any of those in the original question.

The point, of course, is, if you answer "yes" to the question, you show the bias which the system has inculcated that words are really, first and foremost, "strings of letters" on a page (or a screen), which is really to say, that the "written word" has primacy over the spoken, and that "legitimate" language issues from books, rather than from ordinary speakers.

If your first (gut) reäction is "no", then you are not subject to this bias. (And I dare say most of us are subject to it, simply because we have been so inculcated.) There is not only no "e"-sound at the end of any of those words, there is no vowel sound at all. "Silent -", so-called, is merely a device, a mater lectionis (a "key") to how to read (out loud, or pronounce) between what would otherwise be ambiguous strings in the orthography of modern English so, e.g., : , : , : , : , etc., etc., etc.) (This holds true in general, but, of course, English orthography is chock full of exceptions, , for example.)

Other examples that don't seem to jibe with your statement:

close (adjective) : close (the verb, which in my native dialect, at least, is homophonous with clothes, the old (and former) plural of cloth, but now used exclusively with specialized meaning)
could (< can)
cupboard and blackguard
dumb and comb
woman/women
batman/Batman (the comic book character) ([bætmәn] (or -["bætmuhn"], if you prefer) vs. [bætmæn]) (a difference the radical feminists don't pick up on when they try to ban all words compounded in -).
"victuals", borrowed from Anglo-Norman French, used to be spelled but was "Latinized" during the Renaissance for reasons of then faddish prestige. (Yet, the "proper" pronunciation has remained in rhyme with little.)

There's no [w] in or , but, yes, there is one in French oui. (Just sound it out.)

One's answer to the questions all depends on one's perspective: whether "word" means to you, first and foremost, a "string of letters" or a "string of sounds".

These and many more are, to my mind, direct counterevidence to the claim that

(post #256):


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. . . the "string of sounds" is the "string of letters", since the letters of the Latin alphabet (and basic combinations of those letters, like "ch" for the chuh[/u] sound) represent phonemes which are sounds.




(or vice-versa).

It should be obvious from the examples above that there is no necessary one-to-one correspondence between letters/characters (or combinations of them, called digraphs, such as in English) and sounds, nor, in modern English orthography, any guaranteed consistency in their use. For all but the most artificial creätions of the literary or technical spheres, the primal "word" is the meaningful string of sounds.

The spoken language IS the language.

By the way, English is most definitely Germanic!

 

[JeremyErwin]

Interesting article on the neurological roots of grammar.


THE SHAKESPEARED BRAIN

 

[Holadem]

Spelling "truely atrosious," says academic - Yahoo! News

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