Language as a Tool

[A. Katz]

I also very much look forward to reading Daniel Everett's new book!

    --Aya


On Mon, 13 Sep 2010, Mark P. Line wrote:

> Thanks, Dan. I first got into linguistics through anthropology and never
> really lost that frame of reference, so I'm very much looking forward to
> your new book.
>
> Please rattle Pantheon's cage to get them to offer a Kindle edition of
> your book. :)
>
> -- Mark
>
> Mark P. Line
>
>
>
> Daniel Everett wrote:
>>
>> Dear Mark,
>>
>> These are all excellent points. Clearly there is some biology that must
>> underwrite language, or plants could speak. The question is, how much.
>> Less than eating. More than wearing a tie, perhaps.
>>
>> I think that all of your points, however, are compatible with the idea
>> that language is a tool, so long as we don't think that, as you say, this
>> explains everything. It does, however, explain more than many have
>> recognized.
>>
>> My new book on this, Cognitive Fire: Language as a Cultural Tool, is due
>> out from Pantheon (US) and Profile (UK) sometime in 2011.
>>
>> Hopefully, I will have answered your questions.
>>
>> -- Dan
>>
>>
>> On Sep 12, 2010, at 8:16 PM, Mark P. Line wrote:
>>
>>> Aya --
>>>
>>> You said: "Other tools can be studied separately from the people who use
>>> them or created them. Why not language?"
>>>
>>> Although language can certainly be considered a tool, I think it's
>>> unlike
>>> other tools in several very significant respects.
>>>
>>> 1. Although we're not born with language, we can't avoid (pathologies
>>> excluded) acquiring it unless we're not exposed to it. To that extent,
>>> language is a biological phenomenon. A prototypical tool is not a
>>> biological phenomenon, so I'm not sure how valid any conclusions might
>>> be
>>> that are drawn from a premise of language-as-tool.
>>>
>>> 2. A tool is as a tool does: Anything is a tool that is being used as a
>>> tool, including dead wombats, broken screwdrivers or decks of playing
>>> cards. (Completing the imagined scenarios is left as an exercise for the
>>> reader...) So saying that language is a tool is only saying that
>>> language
>>> is used as a tool. Quite a few conclusions can be and have been drawn
>>> from
>>> the fact that language is used as a tool, but I would have to be
>>> convinced
>>> in detail that almost everything worth knowing about language is
>>> dependent
>>> on the premise of language-as-tool.
>>>
>>> 3. If language is a "tool" for (say) communicating ideas, then eating is
>>> a
>>> "tool" for reducing hunger. In both cases, I worry about the tool
>>> metaphor
>>> being stretched so far from the prototype that we're left with an
>>> out-and-out category fallacy.
>>>
>>> 4. More prototypical tools can be studied separately from those who use
>>> or
>>> create them because those tools are easily observed separately from
>>> those
>>> who use or create them. I don't think the same thing can be said of
>>> language -- very little about language can be observed apart from its
>>> use,
>>> so very little about language can be observed apart from its user(s).
>>>
>>> 5. Any proposal to study something as complex as language separately
>>> from
>>> its embodiment is suspicious to me, smacking of reductionism --
>>> something
>>> up with which linguistics has had to put a tad much. Anything that puts
>>> language back into its human context would be a step forward.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- Mark
>>>
>>> Mark P. Line
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- Mark
>
> Mark P. Line
> Bartlesville, OK
>
>