I've been trying to stay out of this discussion, not because it doesn't
interest me or I have nothing to say on it, but for the opposite reason:
It interests me very much and I have a great deal to say on it -- and, I
daresay, to contribute, linguistics being my lifelong profession. But
I'm afraid of being pulled in too deeply when I'm preparing for a new
job with lots of arrangements to be made.
But I couldn't help myself with one or two corrections that I hope won't
be too controversial.
On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Frank Mayhar wrote:
#In this case, it is a gene that affects fine voluntary muscular control of
#the mouth and larynx. It is a difference in this gene that lets humans have
#language and chimpanzees (and the rest) _not_ have language.
*Spoken* language. Signed languages, obviously, do not require the
control affected by this gene. And signed languages
1. are not simple code-like translations of spoken languages
2. are not pantomime
3. are not universal
(Many people seem to believe all of these myths, not recognizing that 1
and 3 are directly contradictory.)
(Credentials, to show that I know something of what I'm talking about
here. I received my Ph.D. in linguistics from UC Berkeley, 1981. I wrote
my dissertation on American Sign Language ("Phonotactics and
morphophonology in American Sign Language"). At the LabPhon8 conference
at Yale at the end of this past June, much to my astonishment and
gratification, people were coming up and saying things like "*The* Mark
Mandel?" and "You know, we still haven't answered some of the questions
you raised.")
There is a respectable theory that signed language preceded spoken
language and may have in some ways paved the way for it. Unfortunately,
AFAIK the general opinion is currently that this theory probably can't
be either proved or disproved, short of a time television to watch our
distant ancestors.
#Given that there is an objective basis for language, I find it difficult to
#accept that very much at all of it can be truly "subjective," at least in
#a way that cannot be expressed and explained given sufficient understanding
#of ourselves.
Much of the mechanisms that underlie language are probably genetically
influenced: "objective". A very great deal of the actualization is
arbitrary, and this definitely includes most of the link between a
meaning and the sounds with which it is expressed: "subjective" in that
it is not physically determined, but partially "objective" in that it
resides in the society, not in the individual.
-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
Philological Busybody
a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel