Neal Stephenson Quote
A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event-- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tendto diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort totie all languages together.Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis.Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steinersummarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle ofthought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Ourperceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing overthat framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study ofthe evolution of the human mind itself.Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not haveanything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you cananalyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits incommon. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits.Have they found any?No. There seems to be an exception to every rule.Which blows universalism out of the water.Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traitsare too deeply buried to be analyzable.Which is a cop out.Their point is that at some level, language has to happen inside the humanbrain. Since all human brains are more or less the same --The hardware's the same. Not the software.You are using some kind of metaphor that I cannot understand.Well, a French-speaker's brain starts out the same as an English-speaker'sbrain. As they grow up, they get programmed with different software -- theylearn different languages.Yes. Therefore, according to the universalists, French and English -- or anyother languages -- must share certain traits that have their roots in the 'deepstructures' of the human brain. According to Chomskyan theory, the deepstructures are innate components of the brain that enable it to carry outcertain formal kinds of operations on strings of symbols. Or, as Steinerparaphrases Emmon Bach: These deep structures eventually lead to the actualpatterning of the cortex with its immensely ramified yet, at the same time,'programmed' network of electrochemical and neurophysiological channels.But these deep structures are so deep we can't even see them?The universalists place the active nodes of linguistic life -- the deepstructures -- so deep as to defy observation and description. Or to useSteiner's analogy: Try to draw up the creature from the depths of the sea, andit will disintegrate or change form grotesquely.
A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event-- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tendto diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort totie all languages together.Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis.Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steinersummarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle ofthought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Ourperceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing overthat framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study ofthe evolution of the human mind itself.Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not haveanything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you cananalyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits incommon. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits.Have they found any?No. There seems to be an exception to every rule.Which blows universalism out of the water.Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traitsare too deeply buried to be analyzable.Which is a cop out.Their point is that at some level, language has to happen inside the humanbrain. Since all human brains are more or less the same --The hardware's the same. Not the software.You are using some kind of metaphor that I cannot understand.Well, a French-speaker's brain starts out the same as an English-speaker'sbrain. As they grow up, they get programmed with different software -- theylearn different languages.Yes. Therefore, according to the universalists, French and English -- or anyother languages -- must share certain traits that have their roots in the 'deepstructures' of the human brain. According to Chomskyan theory, the deepstructures are innate components of the brain that enable it to carry outcertain formal kinds of operations on strings of symbols. Or, as Steinerparaphrases Emmon Bach: These deep structures eventually lead to the actualpatterning of the cortex with its immensely ramified yet, at the same time,'programmed' network of electrochemical and neurophysiological channels.But these deep structures are so deep we can't even see them?The universalists place the active nodes of linguistic life -- the deepstructures -- so deep as to defy observation and description. Or to useSteiner's analogy: Try to draw up the creature from the depths of the sea, andit will disintegrate or change form grotesquely.