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DividedQuantum
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language 1
#23981418 - 01/04/17 01:09 PM (7 years, 26 days ago) |
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It occurs to me that action-based languages, where verbs and process are emphasized, are superior to noun-based languages insofar as all acts of perception and communication are acts of process and interaction. Examples of the former would be Chinese or Navajo, and the latter perhaps English or Latin. I would ask those who have knowledge of this dichotomy to chime in, as I don't know much about any language other than English, Spanish or French -- all essentially structured in large part by Latin.
It also occurs to me that noun-based languages may condition our thoughts in ways that are unrealistic. For example, we might say "It is raining." What is the "it" that "is" doing the "raining"? How sound or unsound is this implicit objectification? Any input from those who have a fairly wide knowledge of languages would be appreciated.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Morel Guy
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Don't over think it.
"it" is just a general 'thing'.
The thing is it's raining. It is also 'now'.
Now it's raining. Maybe it is the clouds, the weather, could be any it.
-------------------- "in sterquiliniis invenitur in stercore invenitur" In filth it will be found in dung it will be found
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redgreenvines
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I think the action or verb based language relates to processes, or to the memories of changing features while a process was underway, while the thing or noun based language relates to processes encapsulated within a thing, and the changes are glossed over.
glossing over change is a big disconnect, but it is useful conceptually
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LunarEclipse
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On the surface, it would seem that noun based languages by definition would be more based on reality than action based languages. I know little but that makes sense to me. I'm a real estate guy so that may be a part of my analysis.
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DividedQuantum
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Quote:
redgreenvines said: I think the action or verb based language relates to processes, or to the memories of changing features while a process was underway, while the thing or noun based language relates to processes encapsulated within a thing, and the changes are glossed over.
glossing over change is a big disconnect, but it is useful conceptually
Very interesting. I guess what that means is that the noun-based languages may give us an advantage conceptually, but the catch is that they're essentially nonveracious.
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zzripz
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I know Alan Watts talked about this a lot, and one amazing book I have read is called The Spell of the Sensuous, by David Abram where he deeply goes into how literacy affected us sensually. How writing first started out looking similar to what was being communicated about but then became more and more abstract:
Quote:
The book unfolds into an exploration of language, and of the power our words have to enhance or to stifle the spontaneous life of the senses. Contrasting the spoken stories of diverse indigenous oral cultures with ways of speaking common to literate civilization, The Spell of the Sensuous reveals the profound impact that writing (and the alphabet) has had upon the human experiences of time, of space, of earthly place.

Someone said 'not to over think' ie about why we automatically say 'it is raining', because eg what is the 'it' which rains. But isn't it so that language may very well condition us to view reality in a static way?
I mean isn't it so that when we take eg magic mushrooms they inhibit this 'chatter' which may prevent a more flowing verbal sensual experience of reality which itself is VERY alive.
Don't you experience this on psychedelics? LOL I know I do!! Everything is process, ek~stasis
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redgreenvines
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Re: language [Re: zzripz]
#23981813 - 01/04/17 04:10 PM (7 years, 26 days ago) |
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for me, with psychedelics the chatter gets heavier - echo-ey & loopy before it seems irrelevant, then artifacts from all the senses and thoughts begin to blend intensely and differently with lots of glow.
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Kurt
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Are we we river swimmers or river crossers?
I would say Heraclitus was a nominalist or noun based philosopher, who happened to uniquely understand temporality and flux, wherein he found his particular solid distinctions. One cannot step into the same river twice, for it is this, now this. (fragments; #40).
Compare to Lao Tze who we could maybe say was a verbalist; in his famous three iterations said "the way called the way is not the way. "
I have been thinking about this difference and similarity, and it can seem to come down to such a linguistic difference.
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redgreenvines
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Re: language [Re: Kurt]
#23982518 - 01/04/17 09:03 PM (7 years, 26 days ago) |
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that was good Kurt
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Kurt
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DisoRDeR
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said:
Quote:
redgreenvines said: I think the action or verb based language relates to processes, or to the memories of changing features while a process was underway, while the thing or noun based language relates to processes encapsulated within a thing, and the changes are glossed over.
glossing over change is a big disconnect, but it is useful conceptually
Very interesting. I guess what that means is that the noun-based languages may give us an advantage conceptually, but the catch is that they're essentially nonveracious.
Pardon, I'm not so familiar with what distinguishes action-based languages from noun-based in practice, but...
Is any language veracious? Extracting a process from the whole and pointing to it with language may dissolve a false granularity on some scale, but I see a fundamentally dissectional quality to linguistic representation in general. Are processes less bounded than objects?
I'm curious -- did Bohm's rheomode inspire this post?
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DividedQuantum
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Actually, Bohm did not inspire the post. I wasn't thinking of it at all.
What I was thinking about was Navajo and the click-languages of Africa. They seem entirely devoted to process and flow, as contrasted with e.g. Latin-based languages, which seem devoted primarily to objects operating on other objects. And I'm not at all well-versed in any of this; my primary motivation to post was to learn.
And non-recursive languages open up a whole other can of worms.
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DoneKildatReason
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Can anyone explain where Russian would lie in all of this? I have been learning it using Duolingo for 60 days straight now.... Awesome app. The language has always fascinated me.., the alphabet is awesome. Plus I want to read Tolstoy or Dostoevsky in native language...
Anyway, can any one answer if Russian is noun or verb based? I guess I'm not following or I'd be able to answer.... I know it is not very similar at all to Latin languages....
I studied Portugués for a year a while back and Russian seems to be very unique.....
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redgreenvines
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noun
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Kurt
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Nobodys asked about computer languages yet?
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redgreenvines
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Re: language [Re: Kurt]
#23985789 - 01/06/17 04:24 AM (7 years, 24 days ago) |
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objects encapsulate properties and behaviors and may inherit some of those properties and functions from previously defined objects.
my favorite is the monkey patch which can completely redefine behavior and potentially still perform the old way too.
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Kurt
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An object language?
My brothers went down that road for a living, but I am not much a programmer myself.
I like how some philosophers of language have said human language is like a game. For instance pointing your finger at something, and saying something like "tree", or "water" or "cloud" or "rabbit" is one language game.
If you are trying to communicate with an alien, or a different tribe of people, that game may seem to be the most certain way to communicate. The finger, and the word/symbol are static, and what we point to is something to hinge on. But realistically this is a game. What we point at could mean anything from a specie of animal, to a point of development in the rabbits life, to an ecological situation around the rabbit. In ordinary human situations of being inducted into languages, learning a language is just repeating gestures and essentially becoming involved in the life of language speakers. Just live and try to speak, and point, if there is confusion, the rest comes along more or less organically. When I point statically, I tend to point to linguistic building blocks.
The difficult thing to imagine is that this seeming basis of language is probably nothing like an organic origin of language; and we just tend to think it is, when we have a consolidated syntax and rules. How important is pointing to the world, to language really? Maybe like in Stanley Kubrick's version of origins, we held a hefty stick, or passed it around before we pointed it at predators and preys, and at other natural things. But maybe we sang a song (inflection), or maybe a "point" of this or that, was just a syncopation of rythmn around a fire?
A computer's developed logic can play a game to try to imitate and simulate and pass off a human conversation. There is a point that that probably happens, I suspect, but a computer can only win a kind of human game that way. All winning necessarily means, is tricking a human into thinking it is a human like intelligence. A computer wins decisively when it wins a game of chess, on the other hand. I think that is really closer to how a machine will think, and to say another thing; speak.
Maybe we monkeys have our on analogue to the analogue of computers.
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redgreenvines
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Re: language [Re: Kurt]
#23986237 - 01/06/17 10:42 AM (7 years, 24 days ago) |
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the overuse of language leads to degenerate thought and communication.
people need to use perspective to determine if the language used is doing the job of communicating an idea (eg proof -reading and elimination of redundancies), sometimes it just fills a void, and that is not a valid task for its usage except where silence is forbidden.
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Kurt
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Communication seems to me to be both the possibility and the sincere charitability in establishing a personable space of exchange. Communication is not a particular proposition of debate, or something to assert.
But philosophically, communication should never be pulling you into something. I don't know what these psychic forces you are talking about are. Learn to be forthright and honest in discussions and then whether you are clear or not, you do not have to be ashamed.
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redgreenvines
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Re: language [Re: Kurt]
#23989467 - 01/07/17 12:41 PM (7 years, 23 days ago) |
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well let us say that your meaning can come out in a sentence - maybe 3 lines on the screen.
however if you spin it into a formal argument, many of the words become parlor decoration, smoke billowing from censors and meerschaums, samovars and other accoutrements of your spider's web enchantment.
the main idea is subsumed and obscured by the social entrapment and sense of hospitality/belonging that is unrelated to the concept being shared.
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Halayudha
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Kurt--
The difficult thing to imagine is that this seeming basis of language is probably nothing like an organic origin of language; and we just tend to think it is, when we have a consolidated syntax and rules. How important is pointing to the world, to language really? Maybe like in Stanley Kubrick's version of origins, we held a hefty stick, or passed it around before we pointed it at predators and preys, and at other natural things. But maybe we sang a song (inflection), or maybe a "point" of this or that, was just a syncopation of rythmn around a fire?
Two things come to mind, Kurt - one is that tone, of voice, carries or portrays more information than the words themselves - at least, some have said this, and various studies have shown - as well as body language, and so forth.
Second thing is related to this - since online, we have not tone of voice - although it can be conveyed and heard by various more subtle means, such as history, relationships, and other intuitive factors, altogether making up parts of various forms of meta-communication (see, hyper-text),
we have a unique opportunity of a new form of communication; so it is language in a new sense, and in a new way. Connected to this, is the significant point that all our words are recorded and - in a relative sense, at least perhaps, -- eternal. . . In another sense, one may say these things are always there or have been -- so when Goethe said, 'Every word and action is reflected throughout infinity' two hundred years before McKenna's life, we here on Shroomery are seeing his words, even though he wrote them down on paper; they eventually got recorded and put online (and, in this case, adapted, as this is not a direct quote... so don't quote me. )
So -- in relation to this, the case might be made that it is not completely different, or not entirely, simply - magnified, examined and accelerated, by being placed and published online, and distributed instantly to the world-wide-web, and possible to to be replied to, etc., -- as well as, lasting and so forth.
Cheers
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
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Kurt
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Good post Halayudha
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