Re: Wordless language (WAS: NonVerbal Conlang?)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sai Emrys" <sai@...>


> One thing that strikes me as a possible other means would be the
> "language" of art, or ikebana, or of dance. Possibly of non-subtitled
> silent film.
>
> But these are borderline cases of being language at all, and one could
> certainly call specific gestures "words". I think it's the gestalt
> aspect of it that breaks away from that. Perhaps a clue to a more
> workable solution....
But I think some of these are wonderful and already "workable" examples,
since they communicate.  Music is a "language" that has no words.  It can
express all sorts of things, even onomatopoeically (Chopin's "Raindrop
Prelude"; Schumann's "Bittendes Kind"), and certain melodic patterns have
come to have emotional "meaning" in culturally agreed upon ways.  This is a
good example of a Gestalt because it cannot be separated out into
submeanings.  Take a measure from the Schumann piece and you don't get
smaller morphemes that contribute to the pleading child.  Wymore wrote:

"There are three parts to a definition of gestalt: a thing, its context or
environment, and the relationship between them." Wymore, 2002
www.g-gej.org/7-1/d-f.html

Another def:  "a configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole
that it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts."  Cheated: got it
from Google.

What a fascinating semiotic question when applied to a wordless language!

But for anything that expresses something more complex than a pleading child
in music, or an event acted out in a silent movie, we're going to have to
have the "sign."  What we're debating here is whether "word" is just another
term for "sign," and whether it's a bound morpheme or a free-standing
utterance, or a gesture in Sign Language.  How would you say, in a
wordless/signless? language (practically speaking that is), "I wonder if the
pleading child is acting this way because he has been indulged by his
mother?"

I think a wordless language would have to dispense with this level of
detailed information, unless it is telepathy.  So I don't know how
"workable" it is qua language, except in a rudimentary way.  For music or
graphic art to become more workable as languages, they will have to start
incorporating something more akin to signs, which brings us closer to words.
And part of their great beauty is they don't.

Sally