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transcending language?
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transcending language?

sensabile
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Posted 09/04/08 - 04:13 AM:	#41
Banno wrote: ...both language and culture grow to encompass novelty. Beautifully put.
For the winner there was a big three-legged cauldron to stand over a fire - it was worth a dozen oxen by the Greek's reckoning - and for the loser he brought forward a woman thoroughly trained in domestic work whom they valued at four oxen. -Homer's The Illiad Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? -Mark 9:50

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/05/08 - 01:47 PM:	#42
Kelby wrote: This is assuming that the contents of language has a devastating effect on our capacity to reason and categorize. It assumes that "understanding" is dependent on words alone, and that the referential capacity of a single word is what defines our capacity to categorize in the world. Our brains help us categorize automatically without the use of words...and infants "understand" the world they come to live in regardless of the intrinsic referential capacity of a single word. I don’t think it is a ‘devastating’. On the contrary, I think it is an evolution. I believe ‘understanding’ is mostly depending on words. I am not sure if the ‘referential capacity’ and ‘categorize’ means grammar? For I don’t think grammar is as important as most linguists believed. A language, without grammar but only words, people can still understand each other but a language has good grammar without words, it couldn’t communicate among the speakers. The connection among words is starting from the infant. They figure out every connection are just like they figure out words. I don’t think there are common rules (grammar) that can tell you how to connect them without practice. Finally, I have to emphasize, for understanding the world, the most important thing in a language is word. Supposing a person knows 2 million words, while another person only knows 10 thousand words, of course the first one knows the world better. Therefore, the target for a linguist is how to increase the vocabulary of its speaker during life time to face the information explosion age.

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/05/08 - 02:03 PM:	#43
Westerien547 wrote: Words are just that - superficial means of communication. I think the human race rather uses the ineffectuality of words to twist their way around what it is rather than tell the antipode - what is - because what is in our minds - and through consensus - is only as good as our sensory gives allowance for. How are words supposed to detail out emotions? Something as deep as an ardent range of emotion, that which cannot be described? I don't mean joys, but the search for internal fulfillment (in my eyes) - happiness - happiness and sadness is deep enough and different enough for everyone that it cannot be described through words. Again, the limitations of words became very apparent when they became deterred in the gray matter they're limited upon and bound to, and such information is useless in my eyes in the gray matter it's bound to as it is. That's my stance on the matter in full, anyway. I agree with you that the words are superficial means of communication. But it is no reason that we have to dump words and find a new way to communicate our internal feeling. Because so many great people had proved that it is impossible. The funny thing is that most current linguists trying hard to solve an impossible question. I regard it just like that in the old day, mathematicians trying hard to divide an angle into three angles equally. Nowadays, every mathematician can tell you it is impossible and don’t waste their times. For linguistics, the most important thing is how to help people to enjoy the maximum information during their life time. Nowadays, the English words is over one million (include scientific words). No body can learn them all. But once we change attitude, everybody can learn more than one million words during a short time.

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/05/08 - 02:10 PM:	#44
newtonsapple wrote: 1)Is limiting our language by using dictionaries, and using correct grammar limiting our conciousness? As will we ever gain the correct word or words to correctly explain the aroma of coffee? Or describe the colour blue? In linguistics, the thing that I hate the most is dictionary and grammar. Therefore, my effort is how to kick out these two things. I am a lazy man. I prefer a language that without any learning while I can know the world better than others.

Civbert
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Posted 09/05/08 - 02:44 PM:	#45
Words can only be understood in relationship to other words. They have no meaning in and of themselves. And the presence of other words is insufficient to have meaning. One must also understand the relationship between words. And that relationship is grammar. Without grammar, words are meaningless. Pure grammar is logic. Words are the terms. Logic transcends terms (the objects of logic) the way grammar transcends words. Taken together we have meaning.
Anthony Coletti

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/12/08 - 02:02 PM:	#46
Kelby wrote: This is assuming that the contents of language has a devastating effect on our capacity to reason and categorize. It assumes that "understanding" is dependent on words alone, and that the referential capacity of a single word is what defines our capacity to categorize in the world. Our brains help us categorize automatically without the use of words...and infants "understand" the world they come to live in regardless of the intrinsic referential capacity of a single word. The view of an adult should be more complex than an infant. In other word, unlike the simple computer to advanced computer, their difference is just speed and memory. For the thinking speed could cause different feeling in mind. Supposing some one speaks a language that it has just two letters as A and B, then every word in that language should be very long as ABBAABBABA. Every time you speak such language you may find that before you can connect the meaning of the second word, you may forget the first word. The feeling may be totally different with our language. While in the mind of infant, there are no language but thinking, they can think about simple things, whenever touch a complex issue they can either stop to thinking or simplify it as their naïve view. In other word they will never find the truth. I doubt why the current linguistics study turned to infant language?

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/12/08 - 02:18 PM:	#47
Civbert wrote: Words can only be understood in relationship to other words. They have no meaning in and of themselves. And the presence of other words is insufficient to have meaning. One must also understand the relationship between words. And that relationship is grammar. Without grammar, words are meaningless. Pure grammar is logic. Words are the terms. Logic transcends terms (the objects of logic) the way grammar transcends words. Taken together we have meaning. I am not sure what do you mean the grammar? If you think it is logic that I can agree with you, but that logic should be much simpler than the English grammar. For this reason, I like logic but not the English grammar. I find in many cases the English grammar is just repeating what have said. The following sentence may be a sample: Yesterday, he gave me a pen. The sentence expressed the past time twice. First ‘yesterday’ tell you it happened in the past, then the past tense ‘gave’ repeat it again. The double expression reflects the speaker suspecting his word. Another example is Five books Once you say five, it means plural, why should you put the ‘s’ after book? For these reasons, I am pretty sure that the so called grammar is not logic but reflect the speaker suspecting his word. From a different angle we may find if the so called grammar is logic, why each language has a different grammar? Are they having different logic?

Banno
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Posted 09/12/08 - 05:14 PM:	#48
Excellent examples, Su
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

Banno
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Posted 09/15/08 - 02:01 PM:	#49
Wittgenstein confusingly used "grammar" to mean something that included both the logical structure of utterances as well as the structure of common use. This is perhaps the way Civbert was using the term. More commonly, "grammar" is the common syntax of a natural language. Of course, this reflects the logical structure. The plural does not reflect a doubt (suspecting) on the part of the speaker, so much as a lack of specificity. So the event described in "He gave me a pen" occurred at an unspecified time in the past, and adding "yesterday" makes the time more specific. Similarly, "I have books" is not as specific as "I have five books". Is this nuance not present in, for example, Mandarin?
Davidson: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement. Russel Morris: There's a meaning there, but the meaning there doesn't really mean a thing...

Cheng-Zhong Su

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Posted 09/19/08 - 03:26 PM:	#50
Banno wrote: Wittgenstein confusingly used "grammar" to mean something that included both the logical structure of utterances as well as the structure of common use. This is perhaps the way Civbert was using the term. More commonly, "grammar" is the common syntax of a natural language. Of course, this reflects the logical structure. The plural does not reflect a doubt (suspecting) on the part of the speaker, so much as a lack of specificity. So the event described in "He gave me a pen" occurred at an unspecified time in the past, and adding "yesterday" makes the time more specific. Similarly, "I have books" is not as specific as "I have five books". Is this nuance not present in, for example, Mandarin? I don’t know how you explain the phenomenon that in a fiction of 2045, all the description using past tense. You may have various explanations but one thing I am sure that is once you tell people that story is happened at 2045 at the first page, and then they will keep that in mind irrelevant with tense. Some linguists believe that past tense was from ancient people that they didn’t need to know a correct time, so roughly tell them before or after would satisfy them. Today, what we need could be 1/1000 second; could you tell people by your grammar that without any figure? For instance, could you add ec means one second past and add ef means two second past and so on? I reckon, the English plural is some time a trouble maker. Without it, we can still express ourselves clearly. The question is that the‘s’ is inconvenient in some expression. 1.23 apples comparing with 0.23 apple, are they different things? 1.000001 dollars, we put ‘s’, while 0.9999 dollar we don’t. Besides this, if a children don’t know what is 1.0001 percent he won’t know how to express the ‘s’ properly. What if the question of a teacher is: log7.8+sin46/tg7=? Voltage(s) Should he use the ‘s’ or not? What about -1.2 and -0.4? Further more, if a teacher asks his student: tell me, R+S is greater than one (feet foot) or less than one (feet foot)? Any word he use would reveal the answer to his student.

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