Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Bryan Maloney wrote:
>
> > > For some corroboration of your view, visit:
> > >
> > > http://www.percep.demon.co.uk/lexicon.htm
> >
> > Sounds kind of 19th-century stuffnnonsensy to me.
>
> Yeah -- I thought Saussure dispelled that stuff a long time
> ago.
I think that Alcott brings up a lot of important problems.  He throws
around the word "linguistics" when he really means "Chomsky" but then,
maybe this was a little more justified in 1983 when the paper was
written than it is now.

His answer to those problems -- his theory that sounds directly
encode gestures -- is certainly wacky.  But I find it interestingly
wacky.

Saussure's declaration of the "Arbitariness of the Sign" of course
applies at most to phonaesthetically empty single morphemes.  As soon
as you start combining morphemes in any way, the combination is no
longer arbitrary.  (E.g. even if it's arbitrary that "twenty" and
"two" mean what they do, it can hardly be said that it is entirely
arbitrary that given those meanings, "twenty-two" means what it does.
And given the pattern in which "twenty" fits along with "thirty,"
"forty," "fifty," and so on, it can itself hardly be said to be
utterly arbitrary.)

Indeed, if there is anything at all to phonaesthetics, there must be
some nonarbitariness to phonetic structure -- at least to people who
have some phonaesthetic perceptions (as people on this list have
admitted they have), if not to everyone.

"Gestural Equivalence" a la Robin Alcott may not really be the way
wordshapes are related to meaningshapes, but I find it credible that
there is some relation, and that the ease or difficulty of that
relation plays a role in the history of language and therefore in the
synchronic structure of language.

Ed


---------------------------------------------------------------------
                       edheil@postmark.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------