When we are infantile, we perceive the world in terms of transformations and continuity. When someone's head disappears behind the playpen wall, it no longer exists. And when someone's arms extend from behind a tree trunk, they are part of that tree trunk. And when that tree appears fairy-sized beside our hand, it is not because the tree is far away, but because you have discovered its untouchable miniature right in our presence. A thing happens to us between this time and adulthood that morphs that cononical perception into an interspersed mass of objects and interactions. Language.
Particularly Indo-European languages (English, French, German, etc.) are primarily based on nouns. We think, communicate and perceive based on what language has done to our interaction with the world. We fragment its natural cohesion just by the way we behold it.
Language was once verb-based... transformation-based. Native American languages, Bengali and other endangered linguistics. These were also peoples who interacted with reality as if it were all actualized in the same condition, and from the same piece of cloth and ultimately still cohesive.
What's the next evolution of linguistics? Maybe it will allow us to perceive beyond our 4th dimensional brains.
ReplyDeletethis is where it helps to know a bit about Chomsky... which i don't. i would help for something helpful, not harmful. unfortunately, if slang wins in the long term, devolution will begin and we will all be screwed. so really, this is a question of economics.
ReplyDelete