Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Language, arbitrary signs, science and religion


I cannot spell a lot of words because English spelling is treacherous. Words are not spelled correctly as much as they are accepted as correct via standardization. There are homophones that are very confusing. Homophones are words that sound alike but are different in meaning, spelling, or both. Up until the 18th Century, words were spelled many different ways (i.e. discrete, discreet, discrete, discreete). With this homophone; discreet implies the showing of prudence in one's behavior or reserve in one's speech, but spelled discrete means separate or unrelated.

Consider all but the first three of the words listed are misspelled: Colonel, ache, hark, harken, mispelled, buffay, ryme, cloathes, whair, profesor, bizzy, forteen, fourty, supercede, conceed, procede, idiosyncracy, concensus, dette, doute, accomodate, impressario, irresistable, rhythym, opthalmologist, diptheria, anamoly, afficianado, grafitti, preceeding, wun, and wunce.

Only 84% of English spellings conform to general pattern while 400 irregular spellings occur!

It was possible to tell where in Britain a letter or manuscript had been written from observing the spellings until the printing press was adopted. English spelling were being standardized as the language was having a phonetic seizure that results in a body of spellings that reflect the pronunciations of people living 400 years ago.

 Noah Webster drove standard spellings and lobbied Congress to make it a legal requirement, making America the first country in history to have deviant spelling a punishable offense.

 I cannot recall peoples name because the proper name is arbitrary. The name Fred does not resemble a human. As far as that goes, the word horse has no resemblance to a horse. This arbitrary significance of words defines the difference between human language and animal communication. Signs are arbitrary in contrast with animal signals. Signals relate to its object whereas signs define an object with language. Signs subsist in language as a representation of the world. The qualitative difference between human language and animal systems is signs indexed and learned through association with their object. Jewish and Hebrew concept of a name is something that conveys the nature and essence of the thing named. It represents a history and reputation of the being named; not merely an arbitrary designation. Possessing speech is essential to our concept of intelligence and being human. Language reliably creates new combination of ideas to arise in our minds. Words shape events in our brain.

The Origin of Species was submitted by Charles Darwin in 1859 after he collected twenty years of data on the theory of natural selection. He published The Descent of Man to address the topic of human evolution ten years later yet the origin of language remains speculative and controversial. The Linguistic Society of Paris has not allowed papers on a theory of the origin and evolution of language at scholarly meetings since 1866. Classical languages, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Persian, are intricate and complicated in grammatical form as contemporary languages.

Every culture has a highly sophisticated languages capable of naming or discussing whatever occurs around them. The origin of language remains speculative as the chronology of evolution leaves few traces on the human skeleton. Everything is based on conjecture. The theory based on the same source origin is based on a hypothetical mother tongue. Latin evolved into the Romance languages of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Romance language is simpler not more elegant.

Forty-three words make up fifty percent of the most common words and 9 accounts for 25% of the words in most written samples. They are: and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, you. English is the global language of discourse in business, science, education, and politics with 95% of the world’s airlines using the international language.

A list of English terms that are universal include; airport, passport, hotel, telephone, bar, soda, cigarette, sport, golf, tennis, stop, okay, weekend, jeans, know-how, sex appeal, and no problem. English is flexible with a richness of vocabulary not found in other languages. The available synonyms give English vocabulary distinctions unavailable in other tongues.

The French cannot distinguish a house from a home or a mind and brain; Spanish between Chairman and President; Italians have no wishful thinking, Russians nothing for efficiency, have fun or take care. Japanese sentences usually have no subject. French and German languages do distinguish knowledge that results from recognition and knowledge that results from understanding. English versatility leads to perplexing rules of grammar. No reliable measurement of quality or efficiency exists in any language. A notable characteristic of English is its deceptive complexity. English also adopted words as needed. The pronouns they, them and there are Scandinavian. Anglo-Saxon names were adopted for humble trades like a baker, miller or shoemaker. French names were adapted for skilled trades like mason, painter or tailor. English names were given to field animals like sheep, cow and ox. French names to animals cooked and on the table like beef, mutton, veal, and bacon. The hundred most common words in English are Anglo-Saxon.

 Every reconstructed language is sophisticated and complete from an evolutionary point of view. The emergence of syntactically mature language reflects evolutionary developments of the brain all at once in language. Brain knowledge may supersede religion for cosmology or natural science; humans remain capable of unscientific thought and scientific thought.

Religion is not useful for thinking about the gravitational interaction of celestial bodies since the Renaissance but remains the basis of metaphysical philosophy to understand processes of language and thought. Religion is used for ethical interaction of human beings. The first hypothesis of human origin is in the Biblical creation presentation and claims to have an understanding science has not mastered.