Subject: Re: Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives

From: "Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 19:38:27 -0000

--- In [email-masked], "T. Peter Park" <tpeterpark@e...> wrote:

> ... in his chapter on "Language and Neural Codes," Prof.
> Smith wrote:
> 
> <<What is the poor brain to do to bring these different, mutually
> incompatible classes of information [visual, auditory, olfactory,
> tactile, etc.] together for some common processing step? There is
no way
> that these disparate inputs can be fed into any common processor
without
> being translated into a code that is capable of handling all of the
> modalities at once. What might that code be? It cannot talk about
sights
> or sounds or smells. Such information would be meaningless to all
but
> the specialized portion of the sensory brain that had always been
> committed to each of these senses. It cannot, in short, be a code
that
> deals with sensory signals emitted by some outside agent. It must
be a
> code that refers to the thing *itself*, not the stimuli it emits.
The
> new code symbol would not be "small, black and white, furry," nor
> "pitter, patter, snuffle, stomp," nor yet "awful, acrid smell!" The
code
> would have to be a symbol that stood simply for *skunk*--a symbol
for
> the external reality itself, rather than a set of partial sensory
> reports *about* the outside world. Sensory codes consisted entirely
of
> adjectives, and this universal cross-modal code introduced *nouns*.
By
> the same cross-modal process the nervous system developed a code
that
> integrates individual messages from muscles, stretch receptors, and
> again the eye, to move beyond the body with a symbolic code that
refers
> to space and [pp.143/144] movement in the world outside of the skin,
> rather angles of joints and stretch of muscles. Thus verbs were
born.>>
> 
> This, I think, helps beautifully to account for my own observation
that
> all known human languages without exception possess nouns and verbs
as
> well as adjectives, words for objects and actions as well as words
for
> qualities or individual discrete sense-data. If Curtis Smith and his
> theories about cross-modal sensory processing are correct, the very
> existence of language requires the existence of words for objects as
> whole *Gestalts* and not just stringings-together of their various
> qualities. To use Curtis Smith's own example, language from the very
> beginning necessarily included words like "skunk" and never ever
used
> stringings-together of quality-words like
> "black-white-furry-pitter-patter-stinky" more than perhaps to a very
> limited extent! A language composed of adjective-chains like
> "black-white-furry-stinky," if it had ever existed, would have
defeated
> the whole purpose of language--and could not perhaps have even
existed
> in the first place, as I see Curtis Smith's argument! Curtis Smith's
> theory of linguistic origins, by the way, also suggests that, in
talking
> about the psychology of human sensory perception and the origin of
our
> mental concepts and complex ideas, the Gestalt psychologists may
well
> have gotten it more nearly right than John Locke and David Hume!

T. Peter, I totally can agree with you in this final conclusion: It's
our human brain that creates the nouns. We don't perceive those 
"bundles" of stringed qualities unwinding the coil (the Gestalt!)
into a string of "black-white-furry-stinky" or even a "red-
smooth-soft-causing pleasant emotions...", but as one whole, parallel
impression (=image) of a "skunk" (Stinktier) or a "kiss" 
(=soft mouth kissing). Locke and Hume are correct for sure stating
that there is no perception of the world outside except by our 
senses, but this performs in an integral way, not in a sequence - at
least the result of it when processed in our brains!
What is more interesting to me, is: why are there languages like
Nootka expressing "real" nouns (e.g. house) in a *verbal* 
category? This cannot be due to natural human perception (see above),
but rather to a metaphysical (better: physical) 
comprehension of our world outside! Did they really have deep insight
in physics (the *fact* that all material is nothing but a 
"flowing" (panta rhei!) process - a stream of electrons etc.)?

co'o mi'e .aulun.

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