Re: Part 2 Re: Whatever happened to vulcan-linguistics + question Rob Zook Wed, 27 Jan 1999 12:52:56 -0600 Saul Epstein wrote: > > (Quotes Rob Zook: Monday, January 25, 1999 7:13 PM) > >So I proposed a set of particles on could add to entity and > >action-state words in order to make them more concrete and applicable to > >a specific situation when one wants to use them that way. I called these > >sets words abstractors and instatiators. > > > >Abstractors would define what kind of abstraction you where dealing > >with and consists of the sub-classes of Evidentials, Sensations, and > >Mentations. > [...] > >All the Vulcans we've seen (except for Sybok) generally speak in a > >precise and scientific manner. So in line with that conception of Vulcan > >speech, rather than say, "I saw a le'matya" which has all sorts of > >unfortunate epistemological baggage, I think a Vulcan would say > >, and probably just if > >speaking in an immediate sense. Literally it would mean "I report my > >visually remembered le'matya-like phenomina" or the simpler utterance > >just "my visually remembered le'matya-like phenomina". > > I have some mild objections to this. ( Surprise! ;-) )The precise > meaning we're trying to get across is roughly this, correct? "At some > point in the past, my eyes apparently received radiation in a pattern > which my brain interpreted as representing reflection (or emission) > from an entity having characteristics of a member of the class > {Le'matya}." Yes. > Now, the idea of sight, taken literally, is just the cognition of > light absorbed by the eyes. If we restrict its use to such a literal > sense, and never use sight to mean understanding or imagination or > anything else, I see no reason why a very precise-speaking Vulcan > couldn't say, "I saw X:a {Le'matya}-member." Well, as you might suspect I have some mild objections to this :) I think that speaking this way would bring back those unfortunate epistemological connotations that I mentioned earlier. However, I also object to having a too English or even human like grammar for MSV. AFAIK, we've been dating the creating of MSV as sometime after the Reformation, and that it represents a great deal of language reform. I would say that those pre-Reformation Vulcans would need these kind of grammatical devices embedded into their languages to aid them in unlearning all their pre-Reformation un-C'thia thinking. So I picture Vulcans now still using those same reformed grammar patterns designed to aid Vulcans in thinking/speaking more precisely and "scientifically". With an formal and informal variations in the grammar for differing social situations. Imagine a group of Vulcans travelling thru "the Forge" on a endurance run: Toketh - Sakek, I report experiencing-hearing-le'matya-like-phenomina. Sakek - Toketh, I report experiecing--. Toketh - I hypothesize le'matya-like-phenomina-located-nearby. Sakek - I agree. I suggest (we-ready-[future tense] our-stunners). Jukar - Hredet, I report heresay-from-Sakek+Toketh (hearing-le'matya- like-phenomina-located-nearby). Hredet - I will ready my stunner. Those proposed particles would allow Vulcans to precisely deliniate if they speak from an expereience, a long-term memory, from the memory if the speech of another..,etc. To explain if it was something they saw, or heard, something they felt, or "felt". But without those unfortant assumtions which lie behind something like "I saw a le'matya". In the example Sakek knows where Tokeths coming from, because he hears the growl too. However, what if Sakek did _not_ hear any growl. If Toketh had said, "I heard a le'matya growl", that's a different kind of statement. There is an assumption of existance inherent in that kind of statement. That statement a set of inferences disguised as a report of experience. Toketh has gone from reporting an experience to assuming the existance of a le'matya, and assuming it produced the growling noise, then reporting his _assumptions_. Sakek would then have to evaluate based on someone elses unstate assumptions, a very dangerous practice. Here were only talking about simple speech with simple examples, the more complex the speech, the more of these underlying assumptions we would accept implicitly, and the more dangerous relying on those inferences would become. I think that something the Reformation efforts would try to eliminate. Labguage represents thought's vehical for communication. Speaking in words to oneself (that constant internal dialog with one's selves that most humans have), influences futher thought. Therefore adding certain discplines to the grammar of a language, also adds those disciplines to thought. I think having the ideas arranged so differently "is a good thing" too. > >So, if a vulcan did a mind-meld with someone who had seen a le'matya > >and he was describing his perceptions during the meld he could say > >, "I report my indirectly, visually > >experienced le'matya-like phenomina". > > > >I don't think that Vulcans consider telepathy a "sixth sense", but > >that sensory information recieved telepathically would seem like sense > >memories but one's you know your senses did not report. > > This depends somewhat on how we conceive the nature of telepathic > communication. If it is only the direct sharing of one mind's > perception with another mind, it might make sense not to classify it > as a mode of perception in its own right. But there is also the matter > of direct sharing of one mind's thoughts with another mind. There are > thoughts that are not sensory in terms of the five typically thought > of, but only cognitive. If these are also shared the obvious analogy > is to speech, which is heard. > > It makes sense to me that Vulcan would have a "verb" for the > telepathic "speaking" of a thought, and also for the telepathic > "hearing." In addition (or instead) there could be one "verb" derived > from a phrase like "to share thought" used when people communicating > telepathically have become so much of one mind that it is difficult to > assign "ownership" of thoughts to one of them. Sure, I was thinking along different lines, as in describing what the expereince was like. That's what I thought Martina was talking about in her email. Sensory information from a meld would seem like sensory information. Speech from a meld would seem like speech. No doubt they would have some way of describing it as "mind-sensing" or "mind-speech". But probably not in the same way that other fictional telepaths who perform telepathy in the transmission-reception kind of way. I don't think Vulcan telepathy works like that. Rob Z.