LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.14 (06) [E]

Thu Jan 15 03:56:10 UTC 2009

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L O W L A N D S - L - 14 January 2009 - Volume 06
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From: Jorge Potter <jorgepot at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Numeralia" 2009.01.10 (02) [E]

Numeralia

Dear Luc, Marlou and the rest,

When the Spaniards arrived in the Caribbean, they found the "Indians"
computing with all their fingers and toes. It didn't occur to anybody for
years that they were thinking in a twenty-based number system, thus getting
more out of their anatomy than those who used the ten-based fingers alone.

Jorge Potter

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.13 (01) [E]

> From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language programming"
>

> Maybe more precise to say there's people who won't count past three
> (not "can't" in the sense of being unable). I don't think anybody
> seriously means that a normal human being is intellectually unable to
> count past three (or four *s*).

Sure they do. It's not that long since European "thinkers" have accepted
that women, deaf people and black people have souls.

> Here's one technique how to count without names for numbers beyond 4.
> From http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/~mattom/science<http://www.es.flinders.edu.au/%7Emattom/science>
> +society/lectures/lecture3.html

Well, of course. This is how Cantor figured out how to count the various
infinities.

> From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
> Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.12 (06) [E]
>

> there have been suggestions that language may "format" the brain and
> now that it may "program" the brain. What exactly is this
> formatting/programming, and what is the difference? (Any neurologists
> around?) The formatting metaphor I spontaneously felt to be plausible,
> partly because it is a fine metaphor :-) It would mean that any
> common

"Formatting" is a computer term meaning to wipe a disk (or just use a
brand new, unwritten disk), and write sectors to it using a format known
to the operating system so that the operating system knows where to
write data to on the disk. So the idea of language formatting the mind
would mean that when a new, unused brain is set up by the languages it
learns to receive data in a a particular way. Or that the user of the
phrase doesn't know basic neurology  :)

Programming is writing a set of instructions to make a computer system
behave in a particular way. So to say that language programs the mind is
to say that a psychotic killer behaves in this way because of the
languages he has learned.

Both ideas are nonsense based on the erroneous idea that the brain works
something like a computer.

> Now as to numbers and counting. I think we should make clear what
> counting is. Counting is not a private sense of the right number. This
> sense exists in many creatures. Mother duck knows exactly how many
> ducklings have to be there before she leaves the nest. When all n-1
> are collected around her, she waits and calls for number n. Does this
> mean that she can count to 10?

This isn't evidence of a duck or a cat having a sense of number. I don't
know how many friends I have but I would still miss any one of them if
they didn't seem to be around any more.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.13 (06) [E]

> From: Mike Morgan <mwmosaka at gmail.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language programming" 2009.01.13 (04) [E]
>

> Sepedi, where I do, but with SIGN LANGUAGE Interpreters (in Japan
> anyway), and the whole group of people who sit in commitee (also in
> japan) and decide how a word SHOULD be signed by interpeters -- is
> that once the word is decided upon, independent of the community of
> users (and often contrary to the way they already in fact DO sign
> it!), and the Interpreters get "taught" (and what is a pastor but an
> interpreter of the word?) and gets up on stage and goes to use it, the
> Deaf audience sits there and nods their heads and smiles ... and
> leaves the lecture with not an iota of an idea what the H*** that
> woman (in japan it was mostly, but not invariably, a woman) was trying
> to say. USUALLY they come up (collectively) with some
> "interpretation" ... just as usually fallign far short of what they
> SHOULD have been let to understand. (We DO PAY these people,
> intrpreters, after all ... or maybe not!)

A fairly familiar bunch of ideas, although I get the impression it's a
lot more extreme in Japan than here.

I've tried watching signers signing the soaps, the children's programmes
and the news, and my impression that it's mainly those interpreting the
children's programmes that are clear.

I know young Deaf people who don't use English who can't follow the
interpreter's signing on the soaps. My impression is that the
interpreter isn't really interested in the endless spouting of everyday
utterances and doesn't really bother monitoring his signing to check
that he's making sense.

With the news, Deaf people will say, in honest moments, that they get
some of it. An exception is with the local news, and I think that what
may be going on is just that the interpreters' dialects on the national
news is just too foreign for us Zummerzet zigners. But I know Londoners
who don't manage to follow it either.

But the children's programmes are OK! The most popular at the moment
seems to be "In the Night Garden" but it's never been interpreted:
presumably interpreting narrative like "maka paka", "pinky ponk" and
"upsy daisy doo" is just too much of a challenge!

> (Sorry, i am DEFINITELY NOT a believer in nominalism!

But that's only because Shakespeare programmed your brain when he said a
rose would smell as sweet by any other name  :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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