LINGUIST List 2.687

Tue 22 Oct 1991

Misc: Goes, ASL and Whorf

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Directory

1. Claudia Brugman, Re: 2.680 (S)he goes
2. "Randy J. LaPolla", Re: 2.681 Responses
3. Karen Christie, Re: 2.677 Anymore, Last Names, ASL
4. , Re: 2.632 Whorf

Message 1: Re: 2.680 (S)he goes

I don't agree that ". . .all" necessarily introduces a full body
caricature. I've noticed in my own speech (northern Californian,
I'm 33 y.o.) "BE all" is what I'd use as a general informal verbum
dicendi, while my students would use "BE like". I don't know
whether this is a merely generational thing or whether it reflects
a dialect difference between north and south (California, that is).
In any case, either of these can be used to introduce quotations
without any caricature (even of voice), though they both do seem
to increase the dramatic effect (as contrasted with "GO" or "SAY").
claudia brugman

Message 2: Re: 2.681 Responses

re: Adam Kilgarriff's request for info about 'come' and 'bring' and Ellen
Prince's responce about a paper by Fillmore, the relevant citations are
Fillmore, Charles J. 1966. Deictic categories in the semantics of 'come'.
Foundations of Language 2:219-227.
___. 1971. How to know whether you're coming or going. Linguistik 1971, ed. by
Karl Hyldgard-Jensen, 369-379. Frankfurt: Athenum Verlag. (Reprinted in Essays
on deixis, ed. by Gisa Rauh, 219-227. Tbingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.)
___. 1975b. Santa Cruz lectures on deixis 1971. Distibuted by Indiana University
Linguistics Club.

Message 3: Re: 2.677 Anymore, Last Names, ASL

In response to the note about the 'new logic' (obviously meant to offend) about
ASL and ASL Literature... I accept that perhaps my argument was not as
articulately stated as I had hoped. My point was that there are parallels
between traditional definitions of language and literature.
Traditional Defnition: All languages are spoken. Therefore, ASL cannot be a
language because it is not spoken.
Traditional Definition: All literature exists in a written form. ASL does
not have a written form, therefore, it does not have a literature.
Granted these are very narrow and general defintions, however, I think there is
a parallel between the two situations. Obviously, my very (unashamedly) biased
implication is that linguists have researched ASL and shown it to be a
language...and the same change in definition of literature will occur. I have
also made the assumption that one of the reasons research related to ASL has
only recently begun is because it is the language of a minority culture.
Finally, if the writer of the previous note still objects to my reasoning or
lack of it, I can respond with Socrates Syllogisms...However, I would prefer
to have the writer respond without using the 'analysis' to hide his feelings.

Message 4: Re: 2.632 Whorf

Charles Laughlin mentions Berlin & Kay's classic work as being
the best empirical tests done of the SWH and as disconfirming it.
A follow-up study by Kay and Kempton is discussed in the Relativity
chapter of Lakoff's "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things." The
experiment involved chips ranging from blue to green, and found
that (not) having a word for green in one's native language does
affect how one rates the similarity of such items. Lakoff's
wide-ranging discussion sees this as evidence of an area where
relativity is found.
 Another attempt at an empirical test is Alfred Bloom's book
"The Linguistic Shaping of Thought." He found that Chinese speakers
had more difficulty comprehending a text full of counterfactual
conditionals than English speakers, and attributed this to the lack
of explicit coding of counterfactuals in Chinese. However, Terry Au
and Lisa Garbern Liu in "Cognition" (1985?) replicated the experiment
trying to avoid cultural bias, and found no significant difference.
This case would appear to support the view that cultural, rather
than linguistic differences are often responsible for apparent
relativity effects. Stephen Matthews, U. of Hong Kong