Re: why space opera won't fly (long)

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:04:49 GMT, Andrew Stephenson
<ames@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1190660689snz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

In article <1hh4q6wqqsmx9$.ca0eefqw0sfh.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>
b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx "Brian M. Scott" writes:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:28:31 GMT, Andrew Stephenson
<ames@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:

In article <1b316mr43o15h$.t3lm5z6asp1z.dlg@xxxxxxxxxx>
b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx "Brian M. Scott" writes:

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:07:50 +0100, Gerry Quinn
<gerryq@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:

[...]

When you place a flower on a grave, you're saying something.

But you're not using language.

I need one of James Eades' new, improved boggleometers,
I think.

Brian, maybe you should define "language" for us, so we
can know whether to jump all over you for that assertion.

In operational terms, language is that which is studied by
linguistics. <g> Specifically, it is a system of speech
symbols, where a speech symbol consists of a formal element
which has been assigned a meaning; the correlation between
form and meaning is arbitrary, a convention within a speech
community, and the forms can be realized (at least)
acoustically, gesturally, or graphically. An essential
feature of language is productivity: speakers (including
signers and writers) can create completely novel utterances
that others can understand, e.g., 'The boggart with the
fuchsia ears who lives amongst the dust tigers under my bed
told me that Pavarotti will return from the dead to do a
benefit concert for declawed cats at halftime of this
season's Super Bowl'. Another is duality of patterning: a
relatively small set of basic units (speech sounds, hand
shapes, hand locations, etc.), each meaningless in
isolation, can be combined and recombined to produce an
open-ended set of meaningful units.

Placing a flower on a grave is clearly not part of such a
system.

"Clearly" that's using your definition.

I don't understand your scare quotes. It seems to me that
my final statement is obviously correct: placing a flower on
a grave is obviously not part of the kind of system that I
described in the previous paragraph. It may have symbolic
significance, but it isn't language as I defined the term.

IIRC, amongst Jews, to place a pebble on a grave is to
express remembrance (maybe love but someone needs to fill
me in on this) of the deceased: it is a sign language, if
limited;

It is *not* part of a sign language. Where is the system?
Where is the productivity? Where is the duality of
patterning?

Not all symbol systems are language.

why shouldn't a flower placed on a grave be considered as
part of a similar language?

It obviously is part of some very limited symbolic system;
that system is equally obviously not a language as defined
above.

And why can we not allow that this language may acquire
additional elements and eventually satisfy your (I feel)
procrustean specification, that the elements of a
language _must_ be combined and permuted by speakers to
improvise concepts (if I understand you right)?

I don't understand where you get 'improvise'; the proper
word is 'express'. There's nothing Procrustean about the
requirement; on the contrary, it's bog standard. Can you
say 'The sky is remarkably blue today' in the 'language' of
flowers on a grave? No. Can you say 'I have a stomach
ache' in the 'language' of flowers on a grave? No. In
point of fact there's very little that you *can* say, and
the system is closed: to say something new, you have to
invent a new symbol.

Am puzzled by your position on this.

I'm a fairly serious amateur student of linguistics. My
default interpretation of the word 'language' is that of
linguistics, the study of language. It is of course true
that the word is also used figuratively of things that
aren't language sensu stricto, but I was not using it
figuratively; I was in fact making the point that although
the gesture has meaning, it isn't a linguistic gesture. To
put it a little differently, the gesture is within the
purview of semiotics, but not of linguistics.

Brian
.

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