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Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>
citicorp.com>>Surely the term "Linguistics" is about as all encompassing as they >come? It is a multi-disciplinary field which can comfortably keep >mathematicians, computer-scientists, psychologists, philosophers, >philologists, foreign-language learners and people from who knows how >many other fields busy for years. Is it so hard to recognize the physical world as a medium of its own language. It mediates the comunications between sentient minds. But, more than that it is the ultimate language itself. For what is held up as proof in the court of laws? Not symbols, but physical evidence. No higher level language is as specific in its meaning as the objective world's "machine language". Sapir-Whorf show us relativity, but this is more easily grounded in Whorf's study of Hopi which leads us easily to the conclusion that the older Hopi talked about events as if they were radio engineers. That is, they are verbally in the "frequency-domain" while westerners or tensed verb languages are in the "time-domain". Then too see how Saussure's Synchronic and Diachronic analysis are these as well respectively: spectral-domain vs. time-domai Then know that there is a mathematical relationship between the time-domain and frequency-domain called the Fourier transform and that these two "domains" are called "functional spaces" and are also "dual conjugates". These are functionally different but equally valid kinds of "time". One is sequential, and the other is parallel or "windowed". Add to this that the "Fourier Uncertainty" is called the "Heisenberg Uncertainty" in quantum mechanics and you wind up relating to Quine's Translation Indeterminacy. The objective world has dualism, relativity, and self-reference, uncertainty, built into it. It is not so hard to see that our languages are divided on the representation of time in terms of tensed and non-tensed grammars (Whorf and Saussure), physical relativity (Sapir-Whorf), Uncertainty (Quine). Details: http://www.bestweb.net/~ca314159/ Norbert Weiner, Aldus Huxley, Michel Foucault all warn us that language may be used to control society. Does such power makes any knowledge of linguistics a threat to the political elite ? "... in a Free Nation where Slaves are not allow'd of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of Laborious Poor; for ... without them there can be no enjoyment, and no Product of any Country could be valuable. To make the Society Happy and People Easy under the meanest Circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be Ignorant as well as Poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man Wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd." (Bernard de Mandeville, 1714) http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/SMIPP/frmentro.htmMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue