Re: Yaguello's stereotype: response to Roger

On 21 May, Sally Caves wrote:

> Interestingly, the word "invent" originally meant "discover" in Latin. :)
> Language "discovery."  These people you cite are "discovering" language in
> their own way, perhaps?
    It's a beautiful thought. But on a
practical, therapeutic level, I'd have to disagree.
"Discovering" also implies a certain control,
"a bringing to bear" of mental faculties however great
or small, exploration as opposed to blindly stumbling
around in the dark. I see examples of it every day. It's in the eyes!
    For example, a little girl I'm currently treating had so much trouble
figuring out what language is that she got the "Double Whammey",
ie she's getting 2 concurrent courses of speech therapy: one from myself
and one from another therapist. Very limited lang and dull eyes.
Until this week. She has just reached "critical mass" in her knowledge
of what language is and how to use it, and she not only chatted my ears
off amid a million questions about everything, but her _eyes_!
How they _sparkled_: alive with the act of _discovering_  each new thing
in her world!

> She does say "at the far end of the continuum."  My beef with her (among
> many) is that she never once mentions Tolkein.

On 21 May, John Cowan wrote, quoting Tolkein:

> JRRT, master of our art, potted Yaguello long ago in "On Fairy-Stories".
 > True, he is talking of fantasy rather than conlanging, but as we know,
> for him fantasy grew out of conlanging:
# Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting
# strangeness.  But that advantage has been turned against it, and has
# contributed to its disrepute.  Many people dislike being "arrested."  They
# dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses
# of it as are familiar to them.  They, therefore, stupidly and even
# maliciously confound Fantasy with Dreaming, in which there is no Art;
# and with mental disorders, in which there is not even control: with
# delusion and hallucination.

<snipping  the rest of the very beautiful and right-on quote>

    Exactly! No wonder that Yaguello seems to be
avoiding JRRT: he's got her kind all figured out!
    Sounds like a case of a hobbit who doesn't want to leave
the comfort (and comfortable biases) of the Shire! ;-)


> Wow!  That's really amazing.  The language restrictions Lisa put on her
> speech in the famous play _David and Lisa_ are nothing compared to this.
Do
> you have any other instances of such "discoverers" that you have met in
your
> line of work?

    Quite a few, actually. But none quite as flamboyant as this one.
    Re: "control of the tools":
Last year I had to deal with an 11 year old boy whose lang was
phonologically, semantically, morphosyntactically (  et rellikwa ;-)  )
totally normal. The problem was that he couldn't distinguish
between reality (as we all know it) and fantasy. He also stuttered,
which is why he was referred to me.
    Contrary to what one might expect, I did not try to stop his
fantasizing. Instead we worked on _control_ of the fantasy process!
Fantasy on demand, and otherwise life in the real world.
The results? He learned to stay in the real world in his relations with
it and the people in it, going into fantasy-mode only for personal
enjoyment.
    Oh, and BTW, with the normal controls (or critical judgement or
whatever one wants to call it) firmly in place, he stopped stuttering!


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.