Re: Two thoughts about language...

Posted by Laurence on November 10, 2000 at 05:08:51:

In Reply to: Two thoughts about language... posted by Anonymous on November 09, 2000 at 16:38:20:

1)RELIGIONS
What a subject. We may say that a system evolves within the limits of its inner structure. When those limits are reached, the system is said to reach a crisis state which then implies a need for structural changes. A quite familiar exemple of this is "couples"! But this model holds just as true for larger groups. It is widely used in management counselling. It could be useful to explain larger cultural crisis such as the one we french experienced in May 68. The nice thing about those mutations is that the outcome is unpredictable, eh. Let's life be creative too...(I love it!)

2)LANGUAGE. God, I'm not a professional linguist. I only have "some" knowledge of semantics and psycho-analysis. Have you read the book on Jung's work on lapsus. How part of our sub-conscious seeks to express the repressed emotions or feelings in non-verbal indirect ways, voice tune being one of these. We are all familiar with our capacity to peak out infos from just listening to someone's voice inflections. Much studies have been done on non-verbal communication. Most NLP tools uses it for clues.

: I have been thinking a little bit about language. I came up with two ideas, one of which is about a week old and one of which I thought of today.

: The first is, do ideas (esp. religions, since they have been around a long time) evolve like languages do? I would bet that they do - that someone learns about a religion, but doesn't quite understand all of it, or interprets it a different way and thinks that he isn't interpreting it differently, and then passes on what he thinks is the original to other people. This happens in language especially with place names - there are a few states, for example, with names that are derived from a native american language, but not exactly right. Or, a culture could forget bits of its religion, because they seem extraneous or hard to work with, a parallel to dropping syllables. These are just the two that seem most obvious to me. This process is as opposed to deliberate religious change, such as the Protestant Reformation, which is similar to the Simplified Spelling Board in America.

: The other thing I've been thinking about, more recently, is stress on particular words in a sentence. We instinctively stress the most important words in our sentences when we speak. Most autistic people do not stress words much in their sentences, and perhaps not coincidentally, they have oddly placed senses of importance. Is this a learned habit, or something inborn? It is the same in every language, which is why I question it being learned. Dogs do it; when they bark, they bark louder if they are more excited, and therefore barking about something more importnat. Cats do it. I can't think of a single animal that does not communicate more forcefully when it considers the need more urgent, if it communicates at all in any way people can see.

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