Hi Helmut, Yes, as you surmise. I think it is reasonable to take this as a refinement of Spencer-Brown. Let me explain it a little further.
The space in which language grows is a kind of gravitational field where truth is the center from which language arises in the form of marks each of which is an elaboration of some prior, and each mark is a sign of falsity. Thus the structure of language arises layer by layer as a structure of falsity. The more marked, the more false. And it is a gravitational space because the false tends by its nature to fall apart and reveal the underlying, whether it is only a relatively less false underlying layer, or the ultimate underlying layer of truth itself. Because of the nature of the relation between truth and falsity, falsity must be continually reinforced, repaired, defended, etc. or it will fall apart. In terms of markedness, truth is unmarked and unmarkable. Truth is silent. Every element of language arises from some prior by elaborating on the prior. Thus the first event in the arising of language is the production of a sound that interrupts silence and in doing so creates the derivative ground on which language is elaborated. The most unmarked vowel, the most open vowel, the most sonorant vowel is a. So in theory we can hypothecate a as the first mark which establishes the space of language as deviant from truth. Both truth and its manifestation as silence are actual continuities. Sound is a kind of false continuity. It sounds like a continuity. But it has a beginning and an end, whereas silence was already there before the sound begins, and it will be there after the sound ends. Silence is even there during the sound: sound consists of a rapid sequence of pulses of energy; between each of the pulses of energy is a brief gap that has the characteristics of silence, i.e. the absence of sound. Sound is a kind of continuity of discontinuity. You can clearly see this in a sonographic analysis of sound. And here we can also see how it is that the very ground of language is deviant from sound, seeking to interrupt the continuity of truth by means of a faux continuity, and thus is essentially a sign of falsity. Given this fundamental ground, the next logical step would be to mark the vocalic ground continuity by its opposite, that is, to interrupt the continuity, which is done in language by a consonant resulting in such basic infantile linguistic forms as ama, aba, aka, ata, etc. Driven by factors of timing these are often morphed into mama, baba, kaka, tata, etc. From here phonologically the vowel space is further divided into at least three elements naturally occupying the extreme margins of the vocalic space resulting in a vowel inventory of a, i, u. And of course these can be further divided. Consonants are similarly elaborated by the logic of opposition. Roman Jakobson provided the classical explanation of this process of development here: Jakobson, Roman. 1968. Child Language Aphasia and Phonological Universals, Janua Linguarum, Series Minor, 72, Moutoun, The Hague. And I reframed his explanation in the context of Peirce’s theory of signs in “Wild Language” which can be found here: https://umich.academia.edu/CharlesPyle Charles Pyle From: Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2020 4:25 PM To: Charles Pyle <char...@pyle.tv> Cc: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Subject: Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] multiple-valued logic Charles, wow, interesting! I think about it. By first glance it seems to me like a linguistic elaboration of Spencer-Brown. Do all polarities come from a marked starting point, looking out for an opposite in unmarked space? I apologize to everybody "conservative". Please see my use of the term confined within the example I gave, and not generalized to its political meaning. Or replaced with "conventional" or "formerly conventional". Best, Helmut 22. November 2020 um 22:06 Uhr "Charles Pyle" <char...@pyle.tv<mailto:char...@pyle.tv>> wrote: Helmut, Speaking as a linguist, I must point out that the view of language you take in the paragraph I quote below is profoundly mistaken. --begin quote from Helmut---------- The conservative concept of sexuality is male-female, so binary, like black-white, hot-cold, right-wrong, up-down, open-closed, well-unwell. When somebody claims for him*herself to belong to a third gender, conservative people see, that this way their world is made more complicated and harder to grasp, they feel a loss of control, and blame this person for deliberately being the reason for that. --end quote from Helmut----------- To begin with, the examples you cite exemplify the particular kind of asymmetric binary opposition, in technical linguistic terms is called the logic of ‘markedness’, of which the entire structure of language is comprised from bottom to top: phonology morphology, syntax, semantics. For example in phonology we find the same type of asymmetric opposition in the pairs p-b, p-f, p-t, t-d, etc. Taking p-f as a specific example, it is a well-tested language universal that (put in non-technical terms) if a language as f then it has p, but a language can have p without f. The effects of such a claim can be manifest in the order in which children learn language (they learn p before f), the order in which language loss takes place in aphasia, etc., the order in which language is recovered in the recovery from aphasia, and the phonology systems of language. An example illustrating the latter type of evidence can be seen Philippine languages, which do have p but not f. When Filipinos who are not also not native speakers of English try to pronounce English word with f like ‘fish’ they would say ‘pis’. And they would pronounce Filipino as Pilipino. So it is incorrect to characterize the desire to preserve the logic of the word pairs you cite as particularly conservative in a political sense, or in terms of an underlying moral anxiety in relation to sexual deviance. If you use language, you use this logic. And it is not just an arbitrary characteristic of these few pairs of words. You can’t just fudge around with the logic of a few pairs of words without attacking the fabric of language itself. Thus the resistance to loss of control you talk about should be seen as conservative in relation to language itself, not conservative in relation to politics or morality. Furthermore, one must be aware the logic of opposition in language is asymmetric. All oppositions in language are asymmetric. What is in play here is not just asymmetry in relation to concepts that have come to be politically or socially sensitive such as male-female, black-white, right-wrong, open-closed, etc., but in relation to all concepts and structures of language. To illustrate, I assume I can take it as self-evident that the opposition between one and many, manifest in grammar as singular-plural is asymmetric: singular is first and plural is second. When you start counting, you must begin with 1 and then you can get to 2. If you have two eggs in a basket, then you have one egg in the basket, but the reverse is not true. And in keeping with this self-evident character of numerology there has been found to be a universal of language, an empirical claim supported by lots of evidence, that if a language has grammatical singular and plural, then the singular is unmarked and the plural is marked. (And, by the way, if that language has also dual, it is twice marked in relation to singuilar.) That is, some piece of form is added to a word to mark it as plural e.g. dog vs dog+s, tree vs tree+s. Similarly, while many people would not regard it as self-evident that truth is prior to falsity, I hold that it is, and have argued as such in various publications. In keeping with the order of this asymmetry truth is unmarked and falsity is marked. Similarly, down is first and up is second. Similarly, happy is first and sad is second. Thus we can say ‘unhappy’ but not ‘unsad.’ Similarly well and unwell. People often cite right vs left as an example of symmetric opposition, but language, generically, has presupposed that right is first and left is second. Numerically, most people are right handed. And in many cultures left-handed people are punished for learning to write with their left hand, sometimes forced to learn to write with their right hand. And in many cultures left is explicitly associated with evil or dirtiness and right with cleanness and good. There are also cases where the asymmetry goes contrary to what is conventionally believed. For example, the conventional view holds that the past is first, the present it next, and then comes the future. But to the contrary language presupposes that the present is first and the past is second. This contrary view does make sense, however, in that we experience things first in the present, and then they become past. We take a picture in the present, but it instantly becomes past. In keeping with this experiential view the language universal is that the past is marked in relation to the present. Thus look vs look+ed. Obviously the male-female and black-white oppositions, and indeed the true-false opposition, have become the locus of a raging power struggle in western society. In service of this struggle we might want to try to modify the logic and semantics of these fundamental pairs of words, but it would not help that endeavor to suppose such changes are merely going to be resisted by political or morally conservative people. The resistance is embodied in the very fabric of language. Perhaps we need to deconstruct language itself, but you cannot just deconstruct a few pairs of words without attacking the logic underlying them. Charles Pyle https://umich.academia.edu/CharlesPyle From: Helmut Raulien <h.raul...@gmx.de<mailto:h.raul...@gmx.de>> Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2020 11:00 AM To: Peirce-L <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-l@list.iupui.edu>> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] multiple-valued logic List, As Peircean semiotics is a three-valued logic, I think it bears relevance for the discussion about multiple-valued logic. But I have the impression, that multipleness is sometimes explained away by just adding a "maybe" to the values "yes" and "no" (e.g. Lukasiewicz). I think, this is wrong. I think, multipleness comes from more than one dimension of (binary) polarities being relevant for one problem. If a problem is analysed by more than one dimension of polarities, it can be shown, that the logic, the problem depends on, is tri- or more- adic. According to Peirce and others, a more-than-three-adicity can be reduced to three-adicities, but a three-adicity cannot always, or can hardly ever, be reduced to binarities. I would say, when different polarities create a triadicity, which from then on cannot be reduced back to them, this is an emergence. A polarity is logically an easy thing to grasp, and a traidicity is not. So this emergence often brings with it a feeling of loss of control, and anger. This is an explanation for homophobia and transphobia: The conservative concept of sexuality is male-female, so binary, like black-white, hot-cold, right-wrong, up-down, open-closed, well-unwell. When somebody claims for him*herself to belong to a third gender, conservative people see, that this way their world is made more complicated and harder to grasp, they feel a loss of control, and blame this person for deliberately being the reason for that. The reason for sexuality being not binary anymore is, that in an open society there are more than one polarity-dimensions now. One dimension is the biological male-female distinction (the sex), another dimension is the social dimension (the gender): What sex do I want to be, and the third dimension is the attraction: Which sex am I attracted to for having as a partner. A fourth dimension is, do I care about sex at all, or am rather tired of the whole topic. I just have mentioned this example due to its obvious relevance in contemporary discussions, but there are many more examples in nowadays culture, e.g. the rightism-leftism-discussion. Today it is not so easy anymore to distinguish between what is rightist and what leftist, like it was in former decades. Well, I just wanted to propose looking at all these things sensibly, with using adicy-models and the concept of emergence and irreducibility of triads. I have the feeling, that a triadic view is opposed to digitalism, which, with its binary 1-0-distinction in the small transistor-scale just creates polarities, fiter bubbles, hatred, in the large scales of communication too. Best, Helmut _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu<mailto:peirce-L@list.iupui.edu> . ► To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message NOT to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu<mailto:l...@list.iupui.edu> with no subject, and with the sole line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. 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