8.1473, Disc: Discussion of Yngve Review

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-1473. Sun Oct 12 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.1473, Disc: Discussion of Yngve Review

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1)
Date:  Sun, 12 Oct 1997 15:25:02 -0400 (EDT)
From:  Dan Moonhawk Alford <dalford at haywire.csuhayward.edu>
Subject:  Re: 8.1409, Disc: Author's reply to Review of Yngve 1996

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Sun, 12 Oct 1997 15:25:02 -0400 (EDT)
From:  Dan Moonhawk Alford <dalford at haywire.csuhayward.edu>
Subject:  Re: 8.1409, Disc: Author's reply to Review of Yngve 1996


By the following remarks, I mean in no way to
minimize Yngve's work; in fact, I intend to find and
buy the book, thereby encouraging him to continue.
His notion of science, however, is only an important
HALF of what 20th Century science is, by his
conveniently omitting the relativity and quantum
insights which have transformed Newtonianism to just
an important half of the whole picture, and only half
of what linguistics is and has been guided toward by
our most distinguished thinkers. Until the linguistic
method became accepted, there was nothing that even
pretended to the label 'science' that gave meaning its
equal share. Now Yngve and others want us to dismiss
meaning altogether and retrench into being a
Newtonian science which abhors meaning--a mere half
pretending to be the whole. For Yngve, there is no
obvious place whatever for meaning in the four
assumptions of science.

Retrenchment to Newtonian Scientism
	I define scientism as that attitude based on an
outmoded Newtonian science resting on materialism
alone, which refuses to move toward a full recognition
of the complementary balance of form and meaning
that has been happening in physics--surely science
par excellence--since the beginning of this century
(meaning is currently allowed in quantum physics
under the phrase "The X Interpretation," where facts
assume different importance and scope, and
therefore different meaning, depending on the
Interpretation), and in linguistics for much longer. It is
precisely the balance or harmony of form and meaning
which suggests linguistics, the first to codify such
interrelationships as equally true objects of study
simultaneously, as a model of 21st Century
Complementary Science, in which all sciences will
have to allow form and meaning each its due,
especially given that much of meaning resides in
context/environment. The real physical world is a
very important part of the total picture -- but so is
meaning. The real world is not our total world, and
frankly, as far as language is concerned, we live more
in the meaning than the physical part (as when our
consciousness blips over uhs, ums, false starts and
other forms as we follow the stream of intended
meaning).

Constructed Reality
> It was not reality but philosophy that the Stoics
> divided. This may reflect a confusion about reality,
> possibly stemming from confusions in the
> philosophical literature where 'reality' is
> sometimes unreal or in the social-science literature
> where 'reality' is sometimes 'constructed'.

I'm confused by this characterization of constructed
reality and the difference implied for Yngve's own use of
the term 'reality', which I take to be short for
'physical reality' (kind of the way linguists use
'language' as a shorthand term for 'human language,'
the fallacy of which can be seen as the pomposity
leaks out of the sentence "Language sets apart
humans from the animals" when the so-called
equivalent phrase "Human language" is substituted).
Lets take three things that are very physical --
rainbows, overcoming our retinal blind spot, and
color--all of which are constructed.

Unlike trees falling in the forest, rainbows do not
exist unless someone is in exactly the right position
with the sun to create them. Seeing a rainbow clearly
is an act of constructed reality, as is our everyday
wonder of seeing the world without a big blind spot in
our field of vision (since the nerve does not pick up
light falling on the part of the eye where it
attaches) -- our brain constructs what we see, even
filling in the blind spot; there is nothing causal about
what frequencies come in to our eyes and therefore
what we see. Here's a simple physical fact: molecules
do not have color. Yet most of us see in joyous
technicolor as our brain constructs colors from the
frequency realities we are processing and projects
them outward onto objects. So we construct the colors
of the rainbow as well as the rainbow itself. Evidently,
none of these facts are to be considered in proper
science because it's just some social science 'construct'.

When 'A' Becomes 'The'
	I'm very concerned when "there is A real world out
there" becomes, in a kind of academic sleight of
hand, "THE real world", implying that only it is worthy
of study. Another sleight of hand is found in Yngve's
use of legitimate to mean scientific in a Newtonian
sense, as in If one wishes to claim that several
different approaches to linguistics from different
perspectives may be legitimate, each must adhere
only to the standard criteria of science and accept
only the standard assumptions of science, leaving
only scientism as legitimate, since he takes that word
to mean 'legitimate AS (Newtonian) SCIENCE' and
allows for no other meaning, as if the 20th Century advances
in his own discipline never happened.

No Place for Indigenous Science Either
	Yngve makes a big deal out of natural sciences,
but we must remember that ancient indigenous
knowledge need not apply to this Old Boys Club. As
physicist David Peat has written in his _Lighting the
Seventh Fire_:

The point ... is not so much to criticize Western
science for not measuring up to its abstract and
rather grandiose ideals, but rather to drop our
obsession with these ideals and comparisons and
suggest that indigenous science presents a valid
understanding of nature in its own right. (p248)

That is, perhaps there are analogous assumptions
that must be balanced with the four in order to
capture wider truths.

Using that terminology, then, I might say that the
first assumption of indigenous science is that there is
also a real world "in here" as well as "out there" that
must be accounted for--a world linguists refer to as
meaning, indigenous people call spirit (as we say the
spirit of the law, not the letter), and most modern
physicists call quantum. The second assumption is a
chaos assumption, that the only constant is flux and
any regularities are temporary illusion; you can't step
in the same river twice, as Heraclitus said. The third
assumption is that there is no universal human logic,
that logic depends on the specific language you use,
and each language grows its own logic; therefore
proof in one language does not guarantee anything
about reality, no matter what definition you use.
And the fourth assumption is that everything is
interconnected, points in a system, where meaning
derives from relationships in part/whole structure,
not mere entities and things. Here's the tricky part:
neither Yngve's assumptions nor mine tell the whole
story; each must be adhered to scrupulously in
complementary fashion even though they seem
contradictory. Western science is biased toward form as
Indigenous science is biased toward meaning; together a
meaning-full balance can be achieved which precludes neither
(as being 'particle' no longer precludes being 'waves').

Whorf Bashing Explained
	Yngve says "Science routinely casts doubt on any
proposed additional assumptions. Efforts would be
made to convert them into hypotheses and test them.
If they did not survive the tests they would be given
up. If they could not even be tested, they would not be
accepted into science but, at best, placed in the realm
of interesting speculation." This is an excellent
description of exactly what the social sciences have
done to Benjamin Whorf (their own hypotheses being
mislabeled The Whorf Hypothesis) at the same time that
hard scientists like David Bohm were taking Whorf
seriously (read his _Wholeness and the Implicate
Order_ while keeping Whorf's "An American Indian
Model of the Universe" in mind). Einstein already
proved in relativity that the language you use
(Euclidean vs. non-euclidean geometries) affects
what you observe, which he got primarily from a
Humboldtian-trained relativity linguist named Jost
Winteler, and which Whorf was trying to reclaim for
linguistics from physics. Does Einstein's insight have
no place in Yngve's science?

Truth, Communication, and Models
	The phrase "scientific truth" is a truly amazing
phrase in print, since stress is not represented: I must
assume that for Yngve it would be stressed as
"scientific TRUTH", though for me it would be
"scienTIFic truth", as in one of many truths instead of
the only.

> ...the people who communicate, including their
> "noncommunicative" behavior. The new foundations
> can indeed make use of such "nonlinguistic"
> evidence.

I was quite thrown by the use of noncommunicative
to mean non-linguistic as if they are equivalent.
Moving the picture higher (Ys example) is quite clearly
communicative although nonlinguistic. Since
linguists generally use language to be shorthand for
human language and call what animals do nonlinguistic
communication, it's not fair to now take non-
linguistic to mean noncommunicative as well.
Nonlinguistic acts still communicate, for humans as
well as animals.

If "Models in science are models of something in the
real world (sic)", by which Yngve means the merely
physical world, then what are quantum models models
of? Or are they not important to physicists?

In conclusion, I like others in the Humboldtian
(-Boasian-Sapirian-Whorfian) approach to linguistics
insist on a new science that balances form and
meaning, not a retrenchment to meaning-less
Newtonianism. Then again, I havent yet read Yngve's
book, only his reply; perhaps he treats adequately the
quantum/meaning realm in his book and it just didnt
come up in his reply. I can hope.

moonhawk


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