Conceptually separating language from biology

[A. Katz]

On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, Noel Rude wrote:


>
>     What would matter (re your question below) is whether the machine
> understood what it was saying.  So far we have no coherent materialistic
> theory whatever of mind.
>I work with indigenous lgs. and it occurred to me a while back to ask,
>"What is a person?"  I was told -- and the answer jived perfectly with tribal
>metaphor and clarified various old legends -- that the person is all
>these inextricable things: 1) wáwnakshash 'body', which is "legislated" first,
> and is associated with the color yellow; 2) t#mná 'heart', appointed
>next, and which is associated with the color red and with intention,
>purpose, etc.; 3) waq'íshwit 'life', which is associated with the color
>blue and with speaking, words, language.

If we define language as that which is spoken by people, and people as
entities whose bodies are like ours, then we've defined away the
question. Under this definition, of course, language is biological.
I just think we'd miss out on some fairly useful generalizations if we
chose this path.

     --Aya Katz

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