Sentences and Events

Does a martial-arts action strike you as a well-executed ballet or a confusing oleo of hands and feet? The current thesis favored on this blog is that language is a system for directing one another's attention so that we can share perceptions, real, imaginary or metaphorical. As it stands now I propose that human evolution began with the formation of communities based on cooperation and sharing. Once our ancestor moved from social to communal arrangements the normal, individualistic, Darwinian impediments to sharing gave way to the group benefits of cooperation and trust. Language became a part of the new order in which, initially, people spoke literally, pointing out perceptible details of reality. Having spent some years assembling the ideas in that last paragraph, I am these days mainly interested in two questions: What new evidence have you got to challenge the thesis? What new evidence have you got that supports it? In this regard, the current issue of Language and Linguistics Compass includes an interesting paper by Eva Malaia titled, "It Still Isn't Over: Evidence boundaries in language and perception" (abstract here). The paper is a summary of twenty-first-century thought regarding event perception and its relation to language. Perception has often been considered as a static process, such as binding sensory impressions into a whole so that we can identify an object or scene. Event perceptions concern changes over time. They too must identify objects, but now the ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Source Type: blogs