the nature of languge

[unjulation]

i wasn't quite sure ware to put this one but "genrel chat" seem so boring for the topic so anyway hear goes.

languague, wether audio or visual, as far as i can see, is not a objective thing it is a subjective experiance that an indervidual goes through

e.g. if someone said the word dog to me yesterday it means the puppy that i got when i was on the road years ago, it has emotional conatations that were created within me due to the circamstanses at the time, interpersonel relationships, physical realitys that i was experiances etc etc, but if you said that word to me today it would me the fact that a mates dog had to be put down and all the emotional conatations that go with it,now if you think about your own perception of dog then they will be totaly diferant than mine due to your owe experianenses of that animal, interlectualy, emtoionaly, etc

now of corse we can all agree on the understanding that a dog has 4 legs a tail barks shits is of the cainin species, you get the picture, but we as inderviduals have an indervidual reaction to the word dog based upon our present experiance with that word at any one time

so what does all this mean in relation to anything that is going on within this forum? well it touches upon 3 things

one, we as human beings spend half our lives runing round in circles trying to define things in a cirtain way because we use this thing caled langague to interact with each outher and in some way and have to come up with some kind of common definition of experiances

secondly, because of who and what we are as psycho-biological beings there is no way that any two people will have the same interpritation of the same word entialy

thirdley, languague both internaly and as a group definition has the ability to be flexible, it changes and grows with experiance and time, both indervidualy and socialy.

[PilotX]

Hey Unj., if you are really interested in this then read Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work - it's all about the nature of language in society, and although it's pretty impenetrable, if you can get a good secondary text then it's not so bad (I read him at uni, so had tutors to help me get into him)

Language is not, imo, really symbolic. This is because there is no real process by which the sound 'dog' recalls the memory of your puppy. It just happens, as if by magic.
Language and definition are defined by the context in which we live, the word games we play. This is both personal and societal, and the reason why 'dog' means both your puppy (to you) and a four-legged furry creature (to everyone). Definition only occurs because of these word games we play, which is why language changes, and why the same word can have many different acceptable meanings (does 'bad' mean good or terrible?)

This also, imho, explains the generation gap phenomena. Although we may both be speaking english, because we exist in different social realities, our word games are completely different. So communication is difficult.

What relevance does this have? Just to bear in mind that two people making the same sounds might be speaking at crossways to each other. We have only two ways to judge people - their speech and their actions (although speech is really the action of speaking, but I think they deserve to be seperated anyway). But we know now that speech has to be critically analysed in terms of it's social context. This may not be possible anyway if we cannot understand the word games being played. This means that action is more important.

Anyway, thats a brief summation of my philosophical position on language ;)

Tom
syzygy visuals

[WordVirus23]

I highly suggest tracking down a copy of William S. Burroughs' Electronic Revolution. the copy I have is VERY small format in both german and english.

[hamageddon]

ah reading recommandations?

well, as a former linguistics student,
i have to recommend good ole chomsky
generative grammar of course...

http://www.hi.is/~whelpton/Files/Al_mal_chomsky.pdf.
quite easy read, not too accurate tho.

[PilotX]

Yeh, Chomsky is always interesting, but I've never got into his language stuff, only his more political writings. I might go back to it when I've finished my current work tho..

Tom

[Anyone]

Basically he said that the human brain is hardwired for langage:

put two people in a white box from birth,
in time, they will form a common langage and
communicate (not necessarily in english though);)

Ne1

[PilotX]

Well, interstingly in english, Sinister (now meaning bad, evil) used to mean left-handed. Dextrous (agile, nimble) meant right-handed. Also, being Ambidextrous means able to use both hands equally, is there an ambisinister?

Despite the language hang-on we seem to have got past this little bit of discrimination.

Also, you have appointed and disappointed which bear no apparent relationship to each other... you can be dismayed but not mayed. I suspect this list might be endless.

BTW *****, there is a Ruth in the Bible, and I believe that she hammers a tent peg through someones head (perhaps Zerodark can correct me here). But thats Ruthless, not Ruthful.

Do we find similar things in other languages i wonder?

Tom
syzygy visuals

[Anyone]

- Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.

- He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

- A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

- On the other hand, you have different fingers.

- Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

- Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse?

- Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

- I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sponges.

- Just remember...if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off.

- You can't have everything; where would you put it all?

- Seen it all; can't remember most of it.

[orx-qx]

Well you are touching semiotic matters, like on famous Magritte's picture This is not a pipe..

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Explaining.Mind96/0193.html

The point is, that words we use are only signs and their meaning we learn is only a people's consensus of what they mean.
Not entering this complex world of signs, symbols, meanings, sense, icons etc. I'd like to say that visual languages are totally different from verbal languages. I try to understand the nature of visual grammars and visual communication, it seems to me to be based more symbolic, ie it has its meaning in itself, common to all people without any learning.

I did some pictures generated by grammar systems which rewrites recursively some grammar rules, now i!m trying implement grammar of time to animate it...

this is older web project, you will need VRML plugin.. or just look at the gray pictures, 3D plants are growing by each entering by one leaf and they are very small :)

http://media.visions.cz/projects/biot/