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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pete wrote: | | I really don't see how sign language can be more than a baseline utilitarian replacement for spoken language. |
I really don't see how you would need more than a baseline utilitarian means of communication in the Paleolithic.
| Gesturing with hands and with faces can convey meaning, and speakers use those tools too. So that's fair enough. But to lose intonation? Or, at least most intonation? |
Like now you mean? Writing is considered more advanced than speaking.
| I suspect sign language has as much flexibility as Microsoft Word. You can use bold and italics and underlining....or maybe make your font size larger....but it's a pretty weak toolkit for conveying the range of intonation the voice is capable of. |
You are comparing a system worked out over a short period by -- or more probably, for -- a no-account minority. If the whole world is at it and they've got an eternity of time to do it, you might expect something a wee bit better to emerge.
Which raises the next question, why didn't we keep it alongside?
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I really don't see how you would need more than a baseline utilitarian means of communication in the Paleolithic. |
Agreed.
What if we go back further, before the Paleolithic. Starting on Day One of the Human Speakers? Every word is a neologism. Every metaphor is new. Every analogy requires the hearer to share the analogized common experience. Utility was the thing they had to build from scratch.
| Like now you mean? Writing is considered more advanced than speaking. |
Agreed that writing loses intonation, compared to speaking. It is "more advanced" because it has a higher degree of difficulty. You have to convey your meaning to anonymous people, who are not present.
But when speaking, you usually know who you're talking to, they can ask questions if they don't understand, and you can be certain you got your point across because the other person's gestures, intonations, and words can tell you so.
When someone tries to add intonation into their writing, they use adverbs or typesetting choices. Both are considered unliterary, a sign of your failure to do it right.
| If the whole world is at it and they've got an eternity of time to do it, you might expect something a wee bit better to emerge. |
In the Paleolithic, using the voice allows up close communication and fairly distant communication (100 yards?). Sign language loses because it has to be closer than that, and a line of sight must be maintained.
| Which raises the next question, why didn't we keep it alongside? |
Because a better system was always available (in the case that the vocal cords pre-dated the emergence of human language). Or if speaking had to overtake the proto-sign-language, then the new spoken word system solved all of the problems of sign language (proximity, line of sight, intonation).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pete wrote: | | What if we go back further, before the Paleolithic. Starting on Day One of the Human Speakers? Every word is a neologism. Every metaphor is new. Every analogy requires the hearer to share the analogized common experience. Utility was the thing they had to build from scratch. |
er... OK
Like now you mean? Writing is considered more advanced than speaking.
Agreed that writing loses intonation, compared to speaking. It is "more advanced" because it has a higher degree of difficulty. |
It is more advanced because it does something that speaking cannot achieve e.g.
| You have to convey your meaning to anonymous people, who are not present. |
Not necessarily. You are not anonymous. The advantage is that writing makes a permanent record whereas talking does not.
| But when speaking, you usually know who you're talking to, they can ask questions if they don't understand, and you can be certain you got your point across because the other person's gestures, intonations, and words can tell you so. |
True but the exceptions are important. When addressing a crowd for example. On the dog and bone. When I'm talking to my family.
| When someone tries to add intonation into their writing, they use adverbs or typesetting choices. Both are considered unliterary, a sign of your failure to do it right. |
I disagree. You can 'work on' the written word. You can't with speech.
If the whole world is at it and they've got an eternity of time to do it, you might expect something a wee bit better to emerge.
In the Paleolithic, using the voice allows up close communication and fairly distant communication (100 yards?). Sign language loses because it has to be closer than that, and a line of sight must be maintained. |
Please provide a list of Palaeolithic situations where this need might arise.
Which raises the next question, why didn't we keep it alongside?
Because a better system was always available (in the case that the vocal cords pre-dated the emergence of human language). |
Having a better system does not necessarily mean the extinction of the original one. (Unless it does, I haven't worked it out to the detailed level required by the adumbration of an AE law. I'll need several more minutes.)
| Or if speaking had to overtake the proto-sign-language, then the new spoken word system solved all of the problems of sign language (proximity, line of sight, intonation). |
It was only an afterthought. (Puts thumb on nose, wiggles fingers.)
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Please provide a list of Palaeolithic situations where this need might arise. |
I will not attempt a list. If we evolved from animals (many of which use vocalization to do medium-distance communication) and if the current human race sometimes requires medium-distance communication, why would I rule out Paleolithic man sometimes needing medium-distance communication? Why would I assume it would be other than vocalization-based?
| Having a better system does not necessarily mean the extinction of the original one. (Unless it does, I haven't worked it out to the detailed level required by the adumbration of an AE law. I'll need several more minutes.) |
Agreed. But are you speaking theoretically? I assumed that vocal cords pre-dated sign language. Are you assuming sign language was the original one (i.e., the thing under debate)?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In the Paleolithic, using the voice allows up close communication and fairly distant communication (100 yards?). Sign language loses because it has to be closer than that, and a line of sight must be maintained.
Please provide a list of Palaeolithic situations where this need might arise.
I will not attempt a list. |
Most remiss of you. It is, as far as I know, confined to (a) territorial warnings and (b) mating calls.
| If we evolved from animals (many of which use vocalization to do medium-distance communication) |
OK
| and if the current human race sometimes requires medium-distance communication |
Not OK. What are these requirements? I know of none.
| why would I rule out Paleolithic man sometimes needing medium-distance communication? |
Until you say what they are, I cannot rule them out or in.
| Why would I assume it would be other than vocalization-based? |
You couldn't. Vocalisation is the only means on the table.
Having a better system does not necessarily mean the extinction of the original one. (Unless it does, I haven't worked it out to the detailed level required by the adumbration of an AE law. I'll need several more minutes.)
Agreed. But are you speaking theoretically? |
I'm not even sure I've reached the theoretical level.
| I assumed that vocal cords pre-dated sign language. |
Then you shouldn't. The power to make loud noises pre-dated sign language, just as as it has with all animals that make loud noises for medium-distance communication. 'Vocal cords' is a phrase used to describe the complex arrangement of tongue, larynx, sound boxes, diaphragms etc (I shall leave out anything in the brain department). Presumably early human(oid)s had the physical equipment all animals that make loud noises need to make loud noises, but no more than that.
[Late thought: unless by an accident of nature, humans happened to have animalistic equipment that was incidentally well suited for 'speech', and became intelligent for that reason.]
| Are you assuming sign language was the original one (i.e., the thing under debate)? |
I am assuming the steps went:
1. Humans used their animalistic equipment to make a small range of communicative noises. The distance is immaterial.
2. Humans developed sign language to allow for more complex communications because they only had animalistic equipment for vocalisation.
3. Humans developed (or as may be, evolution in some form did it for them) more complex equipment that made complex vocalisation possible and found it was better than sign language for (intraspecies) communication purposes.
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