tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post1676488837888668557..comments2024-03-27T21:43:02.451-04:00Comments on NEW SAVANNA: Cultural Evolution 8: Language Games 1, SpeechBill Benzonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-10512958272264620952010-06-26T08:07:50.958-04:002010-06-26T08:07:50.958-04:00Learning a strange language in the field: here'...Learning a strange language in the field: <a href="http://www.sil.org/klp/klp-mono.htm" rel="nofollow">here's how it's done</a>, or, at any rate, how a master of the craft does it.Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-48618139267454326662010-06-25T23:56:43.792-04:002010-06-25T23:56:43.792-04:00Well, you made use of the example, and approve it....<i>Well, you made use of the example, and approve it.</i><br /><br />Puhleeze, gimme a break. I also recognized that Quine was conducting a <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/" rel="nofollow">thought experiment</a> and assumed, apparently naively, that readers would know that as well. Why? Because that's what philosophers do.Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-6937604676679294372010-06-25T21:29:29.603-04:002010-06-25T21:29:29.603-04:00Well, you made use of the example, and approve it....Well, you made use of the example, and approve it. It's not sound anthropology nor even that profound as philosophical analysis. Kapn' Quine was primarily interested in...demolishing Mind (as in say, intentions, ideas, concepts, meaning, etc). And the Gavagai pseudo-explanation helped him with that goal, which you obviously share.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-30721118800379638872010-06-25T21:28:08.129-04:002010-06-25T21:28:08.129-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-40087782328800656572010-06-25T20:16:25.245-04:002010-06-25T20:16:25.245-04:00Surely you don't think that Quine was under th...Surely you don't think that Quine was under the impression that he was giving a realistic account of fieldwork? If you do, then you are even deeper into making stuff up than I'd suspected.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/jivometrics/" rel="nofollow">Golf.</a>Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-6840856583182799402010-06-25T18:34:34.798-04:002010-06-25T18:34:34.798-04:00Quine’s argument (re "Gavagai")is thorou...<i>Quine’s argument (re "Gavagai")is thorough and convincing.</i><br /><br />Nyet. It's merely cogent, and really quite superficial, even in anthropological terms. The old-fashioned, anthro.linguists would collect a massive amount of data on the oral tradition from dozens if not hundreds of speakers, first off, before making definitive statements re meaning, or reference (Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-72945190274990810612010-06-25T06:03:30.150-04:002010-06-25T06:03:30.150-04:00Distributed Phonology
A Replicated Typo recently ...<b>Distributed Phonology</b><br /><br />A Replicated Typo recently <a href="http://replicatedtypo.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/recent-abstracts-1/" rel="nofollow">published a number of abstracts</a>, including this one:<br /><br />Robert F. Port, Rich memory and distributed phonology, <i>Language Sciences</i>, Volume 32, Issue 1, January 2010, Pages 43-55: doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2009.06.001 <br /><br Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-64840211420580613022010-06-24T06:47:16.035-04:002010-06-24T06:47:16.035-04:00More on emics: I’ve posted on Rhythm Changes, a co...<b>More on emics:</b> I’ve posted on Rhythm Changes, a complex memetic entity in jazx culture. I’m a pretty good jazz musician; Rhythm Changes is second nature to me. I can tell in seconds if a tune is based on Rhythm Changes, and I can jam on Rhythm Changes anytime, day or night.<br /><br />Now, for the last few years I’ve been jamming with some guys who are mostly into folk music and rock. For Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-42435581086437758732010-06-23T12:23:51.316-04:002010-06-23T12:23:51.316-04:00I once heard a story about a man who grew up Jewis...I once heard a story about a man who grew up Jewish but who never learned much Hebrew or Yiddish. Whenever, as a child, he did something stupid his grandfather would mutter "chacham". The man grew up understanding the word to mean "stupid" but, in fact, it is both Hebrew and Yiddish for "smart person". The grandfather was being sarcastic.<br /><br />For all that baslowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04328991679116854379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-47706728383781486882010-06-23T07:14:19.078-04:002010-06-23T07:14:19.078-04:00John: As for emics and syntax and semantics, of co...John: As for emics and syntax and semantics, of course syntax and semantics take place in the brain. They are not, in principle, available for memetic use (that is, emic) in my conception. That’s almost the point of the conception, to draw a strict line between what’s outside in the world and therefore publicly accessible and what’s inside the head, and so private. But the central point of my Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-77369498359684000162010-06-23T07:11:21.387-04:002010-06-23T07:11:21.387-04:00John:
My own take is fairly radical for a linguis...John:<br /><br /><i>My own take is fairly radical for a linguist, I'm told. There's no such thing as "the English language" . . . for example. Instead, everybody makes up their own language, and then we all spend the rest of our lives trying to pass as English speakers . . .</i><br /><br />Yes. And, as a result, in the aggregate and over time, the the utterance pool of the Bill Benzonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08360044945265178991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-24826978828946388802010-06-23T04:09:20.876-04:002010-06-23T04:09:20.876-04:00On your comment on the text by de Man: it is all r...On your comment on the text by de Man: it is all right "our" intention that animates the text and constructs meaning, but "our" intention cannot mean the intention of an isolated reader: it is a shared intention, shared by that reader with other readers of the same text with whom one would want to communicate, and also with the author. There is a community of meaning ranging JoseAngelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08498383812404763792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-39665928941633089112010-06-22T15:13:41.095-04:002010-06-22T15:13:41.095-04:00Very interesting. I'm reminded of a linguisti...Very interesting. I'm reminded of a linguistics paper I did long ago on biological metaphors (<b>not</b> on biological origins): http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/mimicry.pdf, also of Charlie Pyle's work on the Duplicity of Language: http://www.modempool.com/pyle/dup/dup.html<br /><br />It's probably not true that "the emic/etic distinction plays no role in" Bill Croft's John Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350283946328687820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6535481649727720492.post-42863582466612481742010-06-22T14:24:36.475-04:002010-06-22T14:24:36.475-04:00From all the readings I've done and original r...From all the readings I've done and original research over the past 30 years on the topic, it would appear that the arbitrariness of the sign isn't exactly as advertized. Very strong groundings in neural processing, acoustics, oral preadaptations involved in materials processing (chewing, swallowing), deep interconnectivities of body modules and parallelism between them and their control,Jess Tauberhttp://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/soundsymbol/noreply@blogger.com