Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

Charles wrote:

> > > So, I'm talking about attachment ambiguities.
> > > Punctuation and intonation help a whole lot.
> >
> > But, if intonation is so important to remove ambiguity,
> > how do we manage to understand each other (for the most
> > part) just fine here in this forum?
>
> Um, ... we don't, pardner.
I seem to remember reading about an experiment in which groups of
people were provided with:

1.  A transcription of a conversation.
2.  A sound recording of the same conversation.
3.  A videotape of the same conversation.

There may have been a variation such as a videotape without sound, or
something like that.  I don't rememember.

In any case, they then asked the readers/listeners/viewers a barrage
of questions about what was communicated in the conversation, to
determine how much information they had received.  They noted
differences between the different groups, assuming that by subtracting
the verbal from the auditory they could figure out what was
transmitted by non-verbal sound channels, and by subtracting the
auditory from the visual they could determine what was transmitted by
non-verbal visual channels.

The researchers concluded that the vast majority of information
actually transmitted was transmitted nonverbally -- visually, so that
the sound-only group didn't get it, or audibly, so that the
transcription-only group didn't get it.

(I have no idea how they decided what questions to ask the people
about the conversation, though, and it seems to me that's an important
part of the experiment -- one could conceivably choose questions in
such a way as to include or exclude greater or lesser amounts of the
sorts of information transmitted by different channels.)

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Boxcars are pulling an Ed of sorts out of town.
             edheil@postmark.net
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