In schools, there are two types of kids: those who are good at memorizing things and repeating them, and those who are good at figuring things out. I bet you were the first kind of guy. They usually go to study humanities, where there is a lot of memorizing and very little thinking.
Your ad hominem argumentation style is getting old. Really, stop it.
But to address your point here: that may be the single least insightful thing anyone has ever said about me. I tend to dislike the humanities and lean toward serious science (even though they call Linguistics a "social science"-- but I like psychology as well, so that may be fine). I'm analytical, hate memorizing, and always question everything.
In fact, I'm questioning you right now. The problem is that your argument doesn't make sense. I promise you (so stop claiming otherwise) I have no particular attachment to the status quo. But you have given me absolutely no reason to believe anything you're saying. You may as well be making up some other completely wrong theory. If you'd like my reaction to change, then either: 1) come up with a coherent way to explain it, or 2) move on to a new theory that is coherent. Up to you.
You are still asking the same questions even though I have answered them many times.
1. I asked for a short abstract. (We all did.) You haven't written it. Please do. If you don't, we will assume you can't coherently summarize anything meaningful from your claims. I can't at the moment either.
2. You might be right. I'm trying to give you a chance to defend your ideas, but if you have reached the point of not being able to further clarify/support them, maybe it's time to give up.
Either you don't understand English language, you refuse to understand or you didn't even bothered reading most of what i wrote, because you have decided at the start that it was all rubbish, just because it is not what you believe in.
No, neither of those. Your arguments are unconvincing.
Again, I've explained over and over: you have unconvincing arguments then you act hurt that we don't believe you and claim we're stuck in the past. That could apply to ANY argument, right or wrong. For you to show us that you're right, you'll need to make a convincing argument, not talk about how ignorant and closed-minded we are. (We're not.)
1. I never said that "N" is the only sound that carries the meaning of a boundary. I said that sound "N" carries the meaning of a boundary. There could equally be other sounds that carry the same meaning, like "Z" for instance. Spoken language is associated with situations, context. So you can have different sounds having the same meaning in different contexts.
Phonosemantics is vacuous if any sound can have any meaning. If you are making a claim that only some sounds have "boundary" as a meaning and not others, then this should be
testable. You have not demonstrated a way to objectively test it, just your own intuition.
You have also not clarified the extent of influence of phonosemantics. Does it account for the shape of all words? Does it determine the entire meaning? Does it just "color" the meaning? Does it apply to all sounds? Does it always apply to those sounds?
2. When I made my prediction, I said this: "I predict that most English words containing sound "N" will be linked in meaning to boundary. I have already analysed quite a few of them and all of them are related to boundary. And I am planning to analyse all of them. ". So I fully expect that there will be words that contain "N" in English language which are not related to boundary.
Ok. Good. This is a place to start. Some questions:
1. If even one word isn't about boundaries, then what are you claiming? Why is N sometimes related to boundaries and not always? What kind of theory would be a "sometimes" theory. (Imagine a "sometimes we have gravity" theory!)
[Note: I actually think, if anything, this is the right approach. But it's crucial that you work out the details and significance.]
2. How do you know? Humans are amazingly good at metaphors, so you just claiming "it's about boundaries" is basically meaningless. As a simple test, give me a word and tell me a concept it is "about". I'll make up a very convincing story. That isn't science or reliable, though. So, again, how can we rely on your analysis when it isn't something objectively testable?
Another way to consider this would be to wonder about exact opposites. The opposite of boundary might be "wide open space". What about "savannah", "open", "plain", "plane", "nebula", "navigate", etc.? If N can predict openness and boundaries, then what is it actually predicting?
A scientific hypothesis works like this:
Hypothesis ("H1"): There is some underlying reason that something will happen.
Null hypothesis ("H0"): There is no underlying reason, so the result will not be observed.
This is how falsification works: if you design a proper experiment, you will find that the null hypothesis is supported when the expected results do not occur. If the results do occur, then H1 may be correct. You can't prove H1 is correct, but you can show that it is incorrect-- if the data is inconsistent.
Now... how does this apply to your theory? Then actually test it. Does your hypothesis make predictions that are consistent with real results? Or do other things occur instead?
3. Group languages are invented by families. Families expand to clans, tribes, nations, races and propagate the language. They also propagate genes. This is why genes and languages are linked.
Shouldn't we also be able to relate family recipes and language then? Also eye color. Also religions. Also location. Also political views.
Certainly
all of these things are somewhat correlated-- families and communities are relevant to all of that, sometimes especially language. But none of it is particularly reliable.
If I eat a sandwich and you eat a salad, then do we speak the same language? (Or let's say Greek food and Japanese food respectively.) That's an absurd question to ask, right? So why would genetic evidence be much better?
Different families can use different logic to link context to sound. Some of them will use "N" to represent boundary, some will use "Z" and some will use "K" of what ever other sound they though was logically linked to the concept of a boundary in the environment they lived when they developed the language. These families merged, languages merged. Not all words in English come from the same "family" language.
Ok! Very important. So: sound-meaning correspondences are entirely arbitrary. Languages vary, so "dog" in English is just coincidentally not like "Hund" in German or "perro" in Spanish.
What you're claiming is that sounds are treated as meaningful units in speech by users of those sounds. That's more reasonable, but also harder to prove, because it's very hard to imagine clear evidence that would falsify it. (You're saying "sometimes" rather than "always", for example.)
So then what is the point of these correspondences? Are you trying to track down individual families that they came from? There's a major time-depth issue in historical linguistics, and I'm certain you'll hit that.
Additionally, what about multiple generations? Are you claiming that following generations of the same family (or speech community) no longer question the form of words? You said families vary in these associations. How are they maintained then? That seems like a fatal flaw in the argument.
Further, why do languages vary at all? If they all (probably) go back to the same original speech community (maybe 100,000 years ago?) then why don't we retain whatever sounds they used? Either it is consistent over time or it is not. So, which?
4. Words change phonetically through time. This is due to the the fact that what we say is dependent on what we hear and our ability to reproduce it.
5. The meaning of words changes through time.
Yes. They chance so much that any kind of analysis like this seems absurd, even if originally there were correspondences.
...When people invented traffic light language, red meant stop, green meant go, yellow meant press on the break, prepare to stop, red light is coming. Stop and go are critical and still mean the same. Yellow now has many meanings, of which most common is press on the gas, speed up, red light is coming.
What is a "meaning"?
This may be an incredibly important point to discuss.
Semantics: the study of inherent meanings of words or sentences
Pragmatics: the study of the meaning of language in context
"It's cold in here."
Semantic meaning: It's cold.
Pragmatic meaning: Close the window.
Roughly, semantic meaning is inherent while pragmatic meaning is contextual.
Semantic meaning of yellow light: in a short time this will be red.
Potential pragmatic meanings of yellow light: slow down (if you have time); speed up (if you don't have time or are in a hurry); watch out! (if your breaks are failing); the cars will stop soon (if you're a pedestrian trying to cross); take the picture now! (if you're a photographer wanting pictures of yellow lights).
In the case of language, there is a huge difference between N sometimes being related to boundaries (well, of course it is, as in the word itself) and being predictably related to them.
6. Words and sentences are linked to situations, context. This is how people learn language. And this is why you can not analyze the spoken language in isolation. You always need to link it to the context of which it is an integral part.
Incorrect. See above. There are two different (and equally valid) kinds of analysis.
To say that "N means boundary" you must establish some sort of conventional meaning for N. It's not just about context.
I asked you this questions: "What do you think? Coincidences, Statistical noise, or are we approaching statistical impossibility of this all being coincidence? At what percentage of words with N sound, for which i can prove that they are linked to boundary, will you accept that there is an established correlation between sound N and meaning of boundary? "
I asked you to think about it, and tell me from your point of view when is the frequency of coincidences too high to be a coincidence. But you didn't understand what I said. Again. Do you understand my question now and can you give me the straight answer. 10% or 90%? Instead you say this:
Ridiculous. In answer to your question, then: no. You haven't shown that there is even a coincidence to begin with (no testable methodology), not to even consider whether it's statistically significant.
If you'd like to imagine something statistically significant, then you can use an alpha level of .05 and a real statistical test.
The key here is "As far as you know". You don't know everything. Use the methodology you preach about and tell me what percentage of hits removes the possibility of coincidence and confirms deliberate action.
As far as I know pigs don't fly.
The fact that I don't know something doesn't mean you're right. It means nothing.
You were asking me for a null hypothesis. This is it: I presume that all the "N" words that I found so far linked to the meaning of boundary in English are all coincidences.
Ok. So why can't they be coincidences?
I believe that if I analyze all of the "N" words in English, and large majority of them is linked to the meaning of boundary then i have proven that this is not a coincidence.
How do you determine "is linked"? Do you mean that you can make up something then report it to us as a fact? You need a methodology.
For example, you could do a survey asking 100 people whether certain words are related to boundaries.
To add to that If I find the same correlation in related European languages, then we certainly have a pattern which is deliberate rather then coincidental.
No, no, no! Don't use related languages to test for lack of coincidence. Use other languages like Swahili, Japanese and Navajo.
You can read about null hypothesis here. You will see that how you prove it or disprove it is hotly debated.
You don't prove anything, ever. You can simply sometimes falsify a given hypothesis by showing that it is inconsistent with data.
Hypothesis: there is no dog in the room.
Data: there is a dog.
Conclusion: Hypothesis is falsified.
You can't ever be 100% certain there is no small dog hiding somewhere behind you, following you as you turn. You can continue running tests and making more specific hypotheses to determine that it is very likely (statistically significant) to be true, but you can't ever prove it.
What we end up doing is either:
a) falsifying a hypothesis
b) failing to falsify a hypothesis (thereby suggestively supporting the hypothesis)
This again is self evident to someone who uses their eyes, ears and brain and who understands what language is. Language exists as part of a context describing information pattern or matrix. This is why "poetry" of the language is so important for it's understanding. Words relate to boundary if they are found in the same context with the meaning of boundary.
Absurd. That's the best you can do?
Science is not self-evident. If it was, then we wouldn't need to discuss it.
Plus, if it's self-evident, great. Why? Common sense is not acceptable (that's not science), so you surely must mean it is easy to reliable detect. How would you train a computer program to detect words related to boundaries?
Soup: the boundary between food and drink
Shoe: the boundary between feet and floor
Ice cream: the boundary between me and deliciousness
Side: a boundary of a figure
Edge: a boundary of a figure
Border: a boundary of a figure
Ridge: boundary within a figure
Seam: boundary on clothing
Cliff: boundary of mountain
Are all of those words related to boundary? Please, find a word that ISN'T related to boundaries...
Satisfied?
Not at all. Your explanations would just be flipped if "edge" contained an N for example.
Your method appears to be:
1. Observe a possible pattern.
2. State that pattern, claim it is correct.
3. Force the data to fit that pattern, without a clear methodology.
I know a lot about statistics.
Hahaha. Why haven't you used any statistical tests yet then? You've counted a few things, yes.
As I said already, this is what I am trying to establish. Do you want to help?
No. I think it's pointless.
But feel free to show me some evidence that it isn't.
Why should I spend my time (or you spend yours) on this rather than
absolutely any other activity? Your argument so far is completely unconvincing. Sometimes if you haven't found the supporting evidence you need, it just isn't there. Like WMDs in Iraq: they weren't there, no matter how long the government said they were while they were looking for them.
You are maybe listening but you have problems understanding.
Are you telling me that there are two possibilities:
1. You're right, but I fail to understand.
2. You're right, and I understand.
What about the possibility where you're wrong? Haha. You're being silly about this. Stop with the whining and ad hominem stuff. Just move on to scientific discussion-- can you support your hypothesis? Great if so. If not, move on.
If you ask me a question, and i answer, and then you ask me the same question again ignoring my answer, then i can at best conclude that you are not listening. But I am beginning to believe that you are incapable of understanding.
No problem. I'll stop asking questions. My conclusion: you're wrong. You haven't even come close to convincing me of anything. Good luck!
As i thought, you are not listening, or thinking or reading what i write. Did you see this in one of my posts?
No. Your posts a very long and haven't ever had a clearly separate part.
(If I really did miss it, maybe I just had a busy day. Feel free to link to it.)
And this just shows how little you understand what language is. It is not arbitrary because it is dependent on context. Do you know how kids learn to speak? Do you know what would happen to kids if you constantly changed the words used in the same context? Do you think they would ever learn how to speak. You can use arbitrary sound to create sound part of the context. But once it becomes part of the context, if you want to have a useful language, it stays stuck inside the context.
Silly. That's not what "arbitrary" means at all. Check the dictionary.
Get all the words in English, separate the N words, separate the boundary N words, separate the boundary non N words.
How do you accomplish the last part? How do you separate them? Is it reliable? Can anyone other than you do it the same way?
I am doing all this...
Actually you're not. Do some calculations.
2. That theory must have a potential weakness, for a certain kind of hypothetical data. (There is more words which don't conform to the above then there are words which conform)
So... 55% is enough of a correlation? Why or why not?
3. See if that data actually exists. (I am actively looking for the data that supports my theory. If I find some data that does not i will let you know. And you can let me know if you find some as well.)
The dictionary has an N section.
