IUBio

Syntax

Mentifex mentifex at scn.org
Mon Sep 7 15:19:55 EST 1998


Jon Wong <saruman7 at hotmail.com> wrote in Psyche-D on Mon 7 Sep 1998:

> A speculation on the creation of syntax.

> The key event in the development/evolution of language and syntax
> was when a verbal utterance became a representation of something
> not immediately seeable, touchable, smellable, tastable, or audible
> in the present environment.  This may seem self-evident because, at
> this point, the verbal utterance has taken on the form of a concept
> -- a verbal, and necessarily mental, construct not constrained by
> immediate perceptual experience or placement in the real world.

A.T. Murray:
  As an example of the splendid ideas expressed above by Jon Wong,
  consider the verbal utterance of the word "blood" representing a
  visual-channel memory of an oozing substance looking red and feel-
  ing wet, as portrayed in the following ASCII diagram of the mind:

  Hearing    Vision    The Evolution of Concepts   Motor Output
 /iiiiiii\  /!i!i!i!\  Primitive Verbal Abstract  /YYYYYYYYYYYY\
| ||||||| || ||||||| |  +   +    +      +   +    | |||||!|||!|| |
| ||||||| || ||||||| |  +   +   / \     +   +    | |||||!|||!|| |
| | ||||| || ||||||| |  +   +  /   \    +   +    | |||||!|||!|| |
| |b------||---------|--|---|-(blood)   +---+    | |||||R|||!|| |
| ||| l | || ||||||| | / \  +  \   /  __+__ +    | |||||U|||!|| |
| |||| o| || ||||||| |(red) +   \ /  (dan- )+    | |||||N|||F|| |
| |||||o| || ||||||| | \ /  +----+    \ger/-|----|------*|||I|| |
| ||d|||| || | ___ | |  +---|----+     \ / _+_   | |||||||||G|| |
| || |||| ||  /   \  |  +   +    +------+ /   \  | |||||||||H|| |
| ||||||| || (image)-|--+  / \   +      +(cour-) | |||||||||T|| |
| ||||||| ||  \___/  |  + (wet)  +      + \age/--|----------*|| |
| ||||||| || |     | |  +  \ /   +      +  \_/   | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| || ||||||| |  +   +    +      +   +    | |||||||||||| |

> But perhaps not as evident is the fact that the disconnection of
> the meaning of a verbal utterance from its immediately-perceived
> real world object or experience means that the newly-formed concept
> has taken on the form of a mental entity that is totally manipulable
> in terms of mental processing.  A mental entity whose existence and
> appearance is not tied to immediate perceptual stimuli is completely
> free to be processed by the system that created it.  This "disconnect"
> of representation from the perception that engendered it must have,
> as a by-product, also stimulated the creation of structure for its
> manipulation.  This, I believe, is a mechanistic explanation for
> the evolution of syntax in language.  [...]

A.T. Murray:
  A way to process the "totally manipulable" "newly-formed concept"
  is to let syntax activate, in serial order, each concept fiber
  as it momentarily is the most energized, most salient concept:

  /^^^^^^^^^^^\                                   /^^^^^^^^^^^\
 /visual memory\           semantic ________     /  auditory   \
|      /--------|-------\  memory  / syntax \   |episodic memory|
|      |  recog-|nition |          \________/---|-------------\ |
|   ___|___     |       |              |        |    _______  | |
|  /image  \    |     __V___        ___V___     |   /stored \ | |
| / percept \   |    /deep  \------/lexical\----|--/ phonemes\| |
| \ engrams /---|---/concepts\----/concepts \---|--\ of words/  |
|  \_______/    |   \________/    \_________/   |   \_______/   |
--
Arthur T. Muurray
mentifex at scn.org
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/ "The Cyborg Syllabus"



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