Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: seeksfemslave
I can begin to see what you are getting at but I still have problems with it.
That you're beginning to see it is a credit to your thinking in itself.
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Lets take the colour red.
Which red?
See, I've probably got a unilateral deuteranomaly, so with my right eye closed, I'm likely to see some colors as being red, while you would probably see them as orange. That's at the sensory level, but it gets even trickier than that when we're talking about language.
In many parts of the world, "orange" isn't really a color at all. And in some parts of it, there aren't really any hues to begin with, but rather light and dark. That's at the language level. They still see the same scene that you do. But a Vietnamese will classify blue and green as the same color, and will think you're muttering nonsense if you think they aren't the same color.
Of course, they will readily admit that the sky and the grass are different shades of grue.
Just as we'd cede that red roses come in different shades of red.
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That image cannot be described in familiar words.
Blood, roses, ripe fruits that do not have the color of the grass. It is not the color of the earth, and not so dark that you can't see it. Nor is it so bright as gazing upon the sun. Am I beginning to make some headway in describing what red is?
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The colour red is a symbol and simple languges have been constructed using say red = stop. green = go.
Yes, but the symbolism of the color depends on where you are. It's fairly universal, which makes sense (it's a stage 2 primary color, I think). But here in the West it connotes danger, while in Africa it's neutral, and in India (IIRC) it is strongly associated with marriage.
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As that language is developed it interacts internally in a very special way and our brains develop as a consequence. That what I think anyway.
Our brains don't seem to develop all that much from it. Just have a look at kids trying to learn algebra; one would almost think they don't use it every day in every conversation. They do, of course. But it's the mindset that is the issue, not the brain itself. And a certain minimum level of development is necessary to make language work in the first place. Most relevantly, we can group similar things into classes, arrange these classes in hierarchies, and navigate the hierarchy at ease, as well as letting one thing stand for another (letters or sounds for words, words for thoughts, thoughts for reality).
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The letter "a" has no meaning. Its a symbol that has to be committed to memory.
Turn the capital letter A upside down. Looks a bit like a ox's head with horns, doesn't it?
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If I said "the Ardvark red yellow green" what would happen? Not a lot. Individual images would exist but collectively no coherent thoughts would be generated
Except, we do try to mix them by filling in the blanks. And arrive at confusion, in this case, most likely. But if you yank "green" from it, we might wonder whether you were telling us that the aardvark is red-yellow (i.e. orange), or asking if it is. Imagine somebody saying this to you with a very broken accent and a question-like intonation.
It's all a matter of finding the "combinators" that will let us combine the words to get meaning.
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As new words are created or learned the brain changes IMO
Then you would be unable to learn new words after age 35 or so.
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Isn't that consistant with that part of the brain that processes intellectual activity being the newest?
It's a lot older than language.
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Whether we have hard wired bits ie there at birth I dont know. I rather doubt it.
We demonstrably do, but we don't have words at birth.
However, every natural language I can think of has a word for mother that has the "M" sound in it, for instance.
And there are a few linguistic universals; for instance, like Yoda nobody speaks naturally.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Language; the Human Condition - 
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