Re: Natural Order of Events

2009/1/28 David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>

> Not sure what to quote, so I'll just go from memory.
>
> I guess there are two questions that are being treated inseparably
> that I'd like to see separated:
>
> (1) In gesturing or miming, "setting the stage" is natural, given
> certain temporal realities and the state of human memory and
> existence.
>
> (2) SOV is the most natural word order for human languages.
>
> I don't think that (1) should entail (2).  Once the human mind
> progressed to the stage of being able to use language, why
> would we need to set the stage for anything?  After all, actions
> are no longer ambiguous (or no more ambiguous than a
> natural language which is a *lot* less ambiguous than a series
> of ad hoc gestures).  While an ad hoc gesture without knowing
> the participants might be hard to parse, a verb has been
> standardized to a large extent, and even if the header/reader/
> signer doesn't know what the context is, the verb itself gives
> plenty of context.
>
True, and I agree with you on that. We humans have the capacity to treat
abstractions at the same level as concrete things (I'd even say that's our
main, if not single, difference with animals), and language reflects that.
We can abstract away the concept of carrying from whatever we are carrying,
or the concept of drinking from the necessity to have something to drink in
front of us. Once we have done that, we can treat the concept on equal
footing with more concrete things, and this frees us from the contraints
ad-hoc gesturing suffers from.


> Now to quote something:
>
> Christophe:
> <<
> Now to go back to conlanging, what about a language with a temporal-causal
> word order? It might be a candidate for a "primitive" conlang, i.e. a
> conlang for a species that has just reached sapience and is only starting
> to
> use abstractions, and thus would likely describe events according to the
> temporal-causal order in which they happen. What do you think?
> >>
>
> This would be interesting to look at--and is why some are so
> excited about that Bedouin Sign Language.  Looking at other
> recently-born languages, though--pidgins and creoles--the most
> common word order is SVO.  Of course, the speakers of even
> fledgling pidgins are already language users, so maybe this is
> an impossible experiment, but consider the unelaborated fact
> that most pidgins have SVO word order, and the new Bedouin
> Sign Language has SOV.  If these two facts existed--and no
> others--one might make an argument that the medium of signed
> languages, which closely resemble non-linguistics gestures,
> might have influenced the creators/users of the signed language,
> patterning the argument structure after the "natural" gesture
> order.  This patterning, though, had more to do with the similarity
> in the mediums, since it clearly didn't affect the emergence of
> spoken pidgin and creole languages.
>
I'd expect pidgins and creoles to be influenced by other languages, rather
than by any "natural order of events". They start, after all, as
simplifications of already existing languages. As for most pidgins and
creoles being SVO, could it simply be because all those languages arose from
the need to communicate between people who already spoke SVO languages?
(most creoles I know have a strong European component, and most European
languages are SVO) I wouldn't expect, for instance, groups of people
speaking only SOV languages to develop a SVO pidgin, for instance. I'd be
glad to be proven wrong though.


>
> Even that, though, is hard to swallow considering Nicaraguan
> Sign Language is pretty staunchly SVO, and its emergence is
> just as natural and hands-off as the Bedouin Sign Language.
>
I'm not sure about that. Nicaraguan Sign Language evolved within a school.
It wasn't knowingly controlled by the teachers who failed to see its
emergence, but I wouldn't be surprised that their effort to teach Spanish
and lip-reading did have some influence on the sign language the children
evolved. Children are very influenceable, even if those influences don't
always work the way they were intended. In other words, I'm not sure about
its emergence being as "hands-off" as BSL. "Hands" can be "on" without the
"hands" being aware of it.


>
> In short, I think this study has turned up something interesting
> about humans; not about language.
>
I agree. This is why my proposal was not a primitive language, but a
language for "primitive people" as in "people having just reached sapience",
whatever that means (I treat "sapience" as "the capacity to treat
abstractions on the same level as concrete things", but that is a personal
definition). It wouldn't surprise me if the "original language" was fully
spoken (primates have enough vocalisation capacity that I don't believe in a
gestural origin of language) but followed closely a "natural order of
events" as I described it: Setting-Action-Consequence (something that in no
way prevents complex utterances).


>
> Christophe:
> <<
> That is a very interesting observation here. In fact, what about spoken
> languages? Do people have examples of languages that use different verbs
> depending on the nature of the object, while English uses a single one?
> >>
>
> Oh, I should mention that my number and verb weren't arbitrary.
> Apparently Tagalog has something like twenty verbs for "carry"
> depending on the nature of the object (carry something in one
> hand, carrying a bundle of things, carrying a big bowl or crate,
> etc.).
>
That's really interesting. I know about classifiers in the context of
counting, but didn't know that such things existed also in other contexts.
At the same time, English does ride or drive, depending on the vehicle,
while French uses a single word "conduire" (which we actually don't use that
much anyway).
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/

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