Languages, like human bodies, come in a variety of shapes—but only to a point. Just as people don't sprout multiple heads, languages tend to veer away from certain forms that might spring from an imaginative mind. For example, one core property of human languages is known as duality of patterning: meaningful linguistic units (such as words) break down into smaller meaningless units (sounds), so that the words sap, pass, and asp involve different combinations of the same sounds, even though their meanings are completely unrelated.
It's not hard to imagine that things could have been otherwise. In principle, we could have a language in which sounds relate holistically to their meanings—a high-pitched yowl might mean "finger," a guttural purr might mean "dark," a yodel might mean "broccoli," and so on. But there are stark advantages to duality of patterning. Try inventing a lexicon of tens of thousands of distinct noises, all of which are easily distinguished, and you will probably find yourself wishing you could simply re-use a few snippets of sound in varying arrangements.
What to make, then, of the recent discovery of a language whose words are not made from smaller, meaningless units? Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a new sign language emerging in a village with high rates of inherited deafness in Israel's Negev Desert. According to a report led by Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa, words in this language correspond to holistic gestures, much like the imaginary sound-based language described above, even though ABSL has a sizable vocabulary.
To linguists, this is akin to finding a planet on which matter is made up of molecules that don't decompose into atoms. ABSL contrasts sharply with other sign languages like American Sign Language (ASL), which creates words by re-combining a small collection of gestural elements such as hand shapes, movements, and hand positions.
Researchers theorize the sign language hasn't re-used simpler elements to create new words because gestures can accommodate a wider range of variation than sounds can, such that many more unique signifiers are possible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @08:33PM (7 children)
We do, it's called aUI The Language Of Space, and it dates back to the 1950s.
https://auilanguage.org/ [auilanguage.org]
http://www.anomalist.com/reports/language.html [anomalist.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUI_(constructed_language) [wikipedia.org]
Millennials think they invented everything.
(Score: 2) by lx on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:01PM (3 children)
Interesting, although that website design reminds me too much of the heaven's gate website [heavensgate.com](yes, it's been twenty years after Hale-Bopp and their site is still up, which must be some sort of record).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:39PM (2 children)
Discredit by association...that's the way to do it!
It's not like heavensgate.com is an abandoned site that hasn't been touched for 20 years;
someone's obviously paying the bills.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:04PM (1 child)
from the site:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:54AM
Not everyone went to the mother ship, I remember something about the site maintainers in a Doc on them
Also the summery gave me brain cancer
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:09PM (2 children)
Although many Chinese characters – which are very often words, not just phonetic components – are formed from a root character and some additional symbology, a very large number of them stand alone.
If hand-waving is words, then perhaps Chinese characters are words too.
They're made of various numbers of individual strokes, so in that sense, they do decompose somewhat. But strokes are positionally sensitive; they don't always signify the same thing the way an "s" or a "w" does.
Wouldn't be all that challenging to create a word-level symbology that was all variations on a single stroke. You'd be able to build a pretty large vocabulary with a little planning and forethought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:32AM
English letters also don't always signify the same thing either. A 'y' at the beginning or end of a word. the 'a' in sad and said. The magical power of 'e'.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:42PM
Chinese characters re-use many radicals, though, which is why you look up characters by radical in Chinese dictionaries (ranked according to number of strokes in a radical). So you could take "⽊", mù, "tree" and recombine it with another radical to make "机", jī, "machine".
The interesting aspect of this sign language was that it doesn't re-use or recombine basic components in that way. Every sign is a complete word.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Tuesday June 20 2017, @08:37PM
So it's like RISC vs CISC?
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:02PM (7 children)
Here's the problem: there are only so many reasonable phonemes to make with your mouth. Most languages have around 50, some have up to 100 or so. If you count variations on African "click" languages, you might get up to 150 or so sounds humans could theoretically use as part of speech if we were sensitive to all those distinctions.
That's just not enough to have a reasonably sized vocabulary for a language if every sound represents only one unique concept/"word". Whereas the number of possible distinct visual gestures is a lot greater. TFA actually mentions this, noting that visual cues in this language can often be very specific and unique, often imitating the thing being described. That's how even humans who don't know sign language can sometimes communicate meaning via imitative hand gestures without too much trouble -- whereas try to communicate meaning beyond overall tone or emotion with only sounds from your mouth when you don't share a common language with someone.
So is this language really that great of a mystery? If anything, TFA seems proof yet again of the failure of the Chomskian generative linguistics paradigm, which tries to postulate cognitive "universals" about human languages. Mostly Chomskians use this approach for grammar and syntax, but there are theorists who have applied such logic to phonetics too, which is where we get this claim that this is a language "that linguists thought couldn't exist." I don't know why we can't just accept that human brains just have a very adaptive learning mechanism, and stuff like reusing symbols is often helpful when you need to represent a lot of things. Why do we need to go the next step and postulate that it's IMPOSSIBLE to have human meaning conveyed through a language that doesn't reuse symbols -- even some unusual language that operates under very different assumptions from most human languages (e.g., using primarily gesture instead of sounds produced by the mouth)? Why not just accept that phoneme reuse is a reasonable constraint in most languages for practicality reasons, rather than assuming some sort of cognitive "universal"?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:12PM (1 child)
Chomsky's a punk.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:44PM
A commie punko.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:15PM
Also, by the way, I don't buy the common linguistics assumption of the "arbitrariness of the sign" either. That is, many linguists would tell you that the connection between a word and its referent is arbitrary -- e.g., there's no reason why CAT should refer to a feline animal rather than, say, to a canine or bovine animal.
On one level, that's obviously true for most modern languages. Onomatopoeia is an exception, which is why we have a special term for it. But there are fringe linguistics theories that look at language development at the phonetic level and postulate primitive languages had such connections between sound and representation. Arguably, I think there are remnants in most modern languages, often only retained in very old roots that might be composed of only a couple phonemes. But there's only so far such imitative sound representations can take you, and when you need more words, you start reusing them, thereby losing the iconic connections between signifier and signified. A language where there are more possibilities for imitation could obviously continue vocabulary expansion further without reuse.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:07AM (2 children)
From what I've read much of the clicks are decorative flourishes and don't convey meaning. Few if any words are composed only of clicks. There are phonemes before or after the click, not both, and clicks aren't embedded, and almost never appear consecutively. From listening to it, I doubt there are more than 10 different clicks.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:40AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:13PM
Why does it supprise you that I have both read about these languages and listened to them?
We have this wonderful thing called the internet. You should try it sometime. It even reaches to your parents basement.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday June 21 2017, @05:34AM
And, even with the increased variety of this peculiar hand language, it is only a matter of time before the rendering of terms like "piece of sh!t" and "systemd" converge into the same sign.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:22PM
The Negev Bedouin are an endangered species, soon to see their lifestyle extinguished as they are forced into becoming sedentary by the benevolent theocracy controlling their silly wrong-God lives.
Better document that language fast before it's gone.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 20 2017, @09:57PM (5 children)
all the other sign languages. Wow, who'd have thunk it.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:48PM (4 children)
Bait and switch is a terrible argumentation technique in any field. I believe the relevant logical fallacy is called argumentum ad doing really bad argumentation.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:00PM (3 children)
Actually, that's NOT what TFA or even TFS summary says. From the summary:
In other words, TFA is claiming most sign languages are like sound-based languages in combining a relatively small number of "atomistic" elements to create meaning. This kind of sign language apparently hasn't done that so far, instead relying on a more strict word=unique gesture pattern. The claim is that this is fundamentally different from any sound language.
Personally, I'm skeptical -- it seems it likely just may be that the vocabulary isn't big enough to force recombination and reuse. TFA actually says this:
So yeah: probably not as amazing or unique as TFA seems to claim, but so far apparently a bit different from other established sign languages (and sound languages).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:22AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:48PM
That's easy. They'll pouch out their lower lip like they're holding a plug of chewin' tabacky and mimic saying "10-4, Good Buddy!" into the handset.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @05:05PM
"American Sign Language (ASL), which creates words by re-combining a small collection of gestural elements such as hand shapes, movements, and hand positions"
That is just incorrect.
(Score: 3, Funny) by NewNic on Tuesday June 20 2017, @10:23PM
See Subject.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @06:08AM (1 child)
This is a "new" language that is "just developing". So...it's not actually a language yet, but rather a "pidgin".
A pidgin, for those who haven't read about linguistics, is what you get when a group of people are suddenly forced to create a common language of communication, for example, if you throw a bunch of prisoners together who have no common language. It will, of course, take elements from one or more existing languages, but what characterizes a pidgin is its extreme simplicity.
Given enough time, a pidgin will develop into a real language. When it does, you get all of the complexity back, because you need it for expressiveness. A pidgin suffices for "take out the trash", but it is unlikely to manage "if you don't take out the trash, the cockroaches might evolve into higher lifeforms".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @12:51PM
TFA postulates they haven't re-used gestures yet because the density of vocabulary has not grown large enough. If the people using the sign language later do re-use gestural components to enlarge their vocabulary, then it would be evidence that's correct.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:10AM (3 children)
It was odd learning that American Sign Language and British Sign Language are different languages, not just dialects of the same language - but from that , I wonder if (a) Chinese Sign Language exists and (b) whether it might also have elements that are holistic rather than built up from simpler elements, much like the Chinese character set? In other words, I'm not so sure this is unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language [wikipedia.org] (most closely related to French Sign Language)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Sign_Language#Relationships_with_other_sign_languages [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sign_Language [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Sign_Language#Classification [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Sign_Language [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday June 21 2017, @10:17PM (2 children)
no idea about the different sign language, but in contrast to what you seem to suggest, chinese characters are not pictographs or evenideograms (at least about 90% isn't). It is sometimes used as a trick during teaching, but most are not actually little drawings of what they are meant to represent (well some are, I think a few 100).
Then there is a still relative small set of ideograms. These are not really pictures though. More like a convention of how to express an abstract idea.
There are many phonetic elements (i.e. you write it like that because at some point in time, it was pronounced similar to another word, and you add (sometimes part of) that character to this new character. In the end, you are left with many elements that have to do with how the word sounds, not unlike our alphabet actually.
Most characters are mixtures of the above. So not holistic, but compounds, just as our words consists out of letter (in addition, many words consist out of at least 2 characters, even although the meaning can in theory be conveyed with only 1).
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:03AM (1 child)
Thanks for the reply. I am now better informed.
I confess, I wondered what an 'evenideogram' was? Some kind of linguistic jargon I had not come across? A new classification of writing elements I hadn't seen before?
Then it struck me.
D'oh!
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday June 22 2017, @07:42AM
sorry...it was late...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by moondrake on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:50AM
About 20 years ago I was in Egypt and travelled with some Bedouins through the Sinai. I distinctly remember our fireplace was visited by a deaf man one night. He used sign language to communicate with the others. My guide told me he was from a village where they were all deaf (we have told them many times not to intermarry...). I have no idea if it was across the border (not how freely the Bedouins could travel those days), but since its pretty close, I'd like to think he used the same sign language.
What always bothered me about that story is that I could almost understand his sign language. I do not speak Arabic, but his sign language was quite expressive and not at all like what I usually see on television. (He told us he had a young son, which I immediately grasped from his gesturing). Normal languages, even sign languages, slowly develop into the use of words, syllables and letters (as mentioned in the article), but in this case, I wonder if not the need to communicate with other, non-deaf people keeps their sign language closer to simply visualizing meaning, and prevents this process (rather than just the fact that it is sign language as seems to be the explanation offered in the article).
In the same sense, I wonder if pictographic languages in the past started "devolving" in more phono-semantic characters like chinese (and eventually syllables or letters) as soon as a group people started to use them between themselves, and formal teaching made it unnecessary to make them understandable at first glance.