On 5/20/10, Carrol Cox <cb...@ilstu.edu> wrote: > Just a few random observations as I can't keep up with all the posts on > this list or even a single thread. > > It seems to me that emphasis on utility/communication leads to ar > radically distorted view of language, its use, and its history.
^^^^^^ CB: This is probably wrong and falls into non-materialism. It is certain that language and culture gave the human species an adaptive advantage in the beginning of the species. After established, its development was no doubt influenced by material necessity at least in the sense of limiting impact. ^^^^^^^ If one > wants to look to other animals for light on language, don't look at > their methods of signalling etc but rather to mutual grooming. A core > use of language, and I suspect in fact the use that brought it about and > maintains it, is phatic. I presume babies babble even among pre-lingual > h.sapiens and adults coo at each other, make sympathetic grunts (that > are NOT signals or attempts to "communicate" but merey (merely!) > acknowledge the existence of the other. ^^^^^^^ CB: Which is not language, so it doesn't throw a light on language. Language and culture are when some hominid way back when went beyond signals to signs. A qualitative difference between signals and signs is that a "third person "is present/exists with signs, not with signals or gestures, the third persons being ancestors , tradition. ^^^^^^^^ > > Most gathering activitities are served very well by non-lingual > signalling. In fact, conversation (for conversation comes with language) > is apt to interfere with such activities. CB: They are not served as well as language, symbols , signs. Gatherers with language have an advantage over gatherers with only signnals. With signs-symbols a gatherer has botany, the experience of previous generations with plants is accumulated and informs the gathering. They have knowledge about poisons, seasonal patterns of growth, mind expanding plants. Of course, gatherers with signs-symbols has both signs and signals. > > I am strongly suspicious of all utilitarian explanations of the origins > or history of language. ^^^^^^^ CB: You wouldn't if you based your speculation in evidence about language and pre-literate societies in anthropology. ^^^^^^^^ > > For coordinated use of muscles, uh uh uh UH serves just as well or beter > than 1 2 3 heave. > > Carrol CB: This is exactly wrong. As Marx says, the distinguishing characteristic of human labor is it high level of sociality and plannning. Planning is done with language and symbolling. "But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality." Hunters and gatherers plan their social labor as much as architects. Can't plan with "uh, UH, uh". Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
