Is Water Hydrogen Hydroxide?

Maybe I am a bit too slow but I can't really see what is significant in this quote by Kripke.
Firstly, things are not so exactly perceived by us through our senses, to be given an exact name. For example, a borderline colour between yellow and green might once be called yellow at one occasion and green at some other occasion. Therefore even technical names are not to be taken very seriously in specifying the identity of an object. There is always more than we know to an object, which might eventually cause a differentiation.
Secondly, when we call something water, it is equal to saying that 'that thing affects me in a particular way'. It might be any chemical compound but it has nothing to do with what I call it.Therefore "water is H2o" is not inclusive, whereas it is cleverly used to mean that water is only H2O (In this quote). You can conceive of 'water' just as a general term.
We use lots of these names throughout our lives. Liquid, for instance, is the term we use to call something by certain properties which are known to us. Thus alcohol is as much liquid as water.
Stating that 'what you distinctly perceive as water might in fact be another compound', is wrong. In fact, it is not another compound but just a kind of water (subcategory). You might just as well say "Alcohol is a kind of liquid."

In the case of tea, it is not a referential failure at all. What we call tea, is a mixture of a substance and water, not a substance.

I agree that formal languages (i.e. arithmetic) are "essentially social." But it doesn't follow from that that "all language" is social.

This doesn't make any sense. formal languages (like arithmetic) are far less social than common speech. So I seems to me that if you agree that formal language is social you are necessarily conceeding that common speech is social.

(Also, my intent is not "to distinguish between common speech and technical jargon.")

lol. Okay, so what exactly was your intent?

The conditional "If social language has no truth, then 'truth' has no meaning" isn't sound

It wasn't a logical argument... so saying it "isn't sound" has no meaning in the formal sense. And in the informal sense it is nothing more than an unsubstantiated opinion--and one which I suspect most people would disagree with. If social language has no truth, then what is it we're talking about when we speak of "truth". How can truth not be truth? What could it possibly mean to say there is no truth, but yet there's truth?

These are things that you do virtually nothing to explain.

I don't disagree with that. If we are using a formal language, then we need to know that fact otherwise we won't understand what the vocabulary of that language refers to.

If you cede this point then (as far as I'm concerned) you necessarily also cede the point that language is based on context... because this is an example of context being employed.

However, your conclusion that meaning is determined socially doesn't follow from your point about points. It could be that meaning is determined by use, and so by syntax - something society has nothing to do with.

No, this is totally and utterly impossible.

Consider the statement,
(R) ..."It is raining."
Is this a true or a false statement?
The only way we can make that determination is by placing it in context. If Tom comes into a dry room and utters (R) it is clearly not true that it is raining inside the room. But if it is raining outside the building, we allow that the statement is true, because the definition of the word rain implies that it is not something that occurs inside buildings. This illuminates two types of context. One is the fact that we have to look out the window to know whether (R) is true. The other involves using our common sense about the definition, and so knowing when it makes sense to assume we MUST be being rained on for (R) to be true. Context tells us that because we are inside a building, we cannot simply assume (R) is false just because we are dry.

Another type of context involves personal perspective. For instance, suppose your in a car, and the air is so full of moisture that although it is not raining (for those people outside of the car) beads of water collect on the windshield as the car moves along. Now, if you're looking out the front window, context tells you that it is raining. But if you look out the side window, context tells you that it is not raining. In one case, you look and observe that the conditions that define raining are being meet, while in the other you observe that those conditions are not being meet.

In none of these cases did the syntax of (R) change. And since the syntax did not change, the variations in our understanding of (R) CANNOT possibly be due to syntax. It's just not logically possible.

There are two ways to approach the study of language. Either of these ways will be informed by the way you view language; whether language is a social object, or something else. I think it is pretty obvious that language is not a social object. This is because language is a faculty of the mind/brain. And the language faculty is an expression of our genes.

I'm not really sure what a [social object] is supposed to mean.

Normal children raised together but with little or no interaction with speaking adults human beings (i.e. the children of mute parents who live in an issolate location) have been found to create a relatively complex language that is unique to the children. So yes, there is something to be said for the notion that language is an inherent human trait.

This, however, does not imply that language is not a highly social trait. A child raised alone, (say by wolves, or mute parents) will not develop a similar language. The purpose of language is to communicate, and communicating is necessarily a social trait.

the two ways to study language are: the E-Language, and the I-Language (for: External language, and Internal language) (see Chomsky 1986) The E-Language is the way you would approach language as if it were a social object, or in some way external from the mind. The I-Language is the way you would approach language as if it were innate, which it is.

Yes, of course language has an internal aspect. It also has an external aspect. Having one does not mutually exclude having the other.

So the appropriate way to approach language is through the I-Language. The I-Language is essentially the internal, individualistic state of mind/brain that is the language faculty. Because each individual has his/her own language faculty, or I-Language, it follows that there are as many I-Languages as there are people.

I would say the appropriate way to approach language is to understand that there are two reciprocal aspects which interrelated and interconnected--just as are [concepts] and [physical objects].

Certainly, just as we can separate [semantics] from [syntax], and study them separately, we can separate the I and E aspects of language and study them separately. But it makes no sense to me to suppose that one and only one of these aspects should be considered valid. They are not mutually exclusive... in fact, they are mutually interdependant.

And so the idea that there is a social object called English, or German, is nonsense.

This is exactly analogous to saying that you think there are individual animals that [purr, have four legs, whiskers, fur, flexible spines, etc]. but there aren't any "socal objects" called "cats".

There are no "cats", just individual animals of unknowable and unnamable nature. But then that implies that there also are no "animals". There is nothing called "individual" there is nothing called "unknowable" and so on. such a conjecture makes a mockery of the notion of an I-language.

Yes, each individual has an I-language that is unique to their own mind (at an given momen... it changes from one instant to the next, as new sights are seen and thoughts are had which modify the language constantly). But just as a dozen people can follow a recipie for soup and each version of the soup will be a little different, because of minute differences in how much of an ingredient is used or perhaps because margarine is substituted for butter, etc. SO TOO, each individual I-language is unique, and yet they collectively define the E-language, just as the recipe defines all of the soups collectively.

And just as a recipie card can be changed a little, when a "better" variation is discovered, so to E-languages can evolve and change, in a similar but different way than how I-Languages change from one moment to the next.

the I-Language is not determined by society, other than that a child's I-Language's (which is growing and developing) parameters are set by any available data

This statement makes no sense. In essence you're saying that the I-Language is not determined by society... except in those ways in which it is determined by society. That is the literal interpretation of what you just said.

The available data parameters are the contextual situations in which the I-Language is learned. If a child lives in a mansion with his rich parents, he will learn a slightly different meaning for the word "house" than a child who lives in a one-room shack with his poor parents. This is most definitely social. If a boy is the smallest person in a family who are all over 6'3" tall, he will have a different notion of what it means to be small, than the smallest person in a family that maxes out at 5'3". Again, that's a meaning with is learned by the social context in which the child is raised.

Subsequent exposure to other people will modify the meanings of their terms--making the meaning of [small] more and more similar as they encounter more people--but individual differences in their I-language arose from the differences in the social context in which they learned.

the only role society plays is in setting the I-Language's parameters. The brain/mind does the rest - that is, it picks the syntax and semantics that the child will use.

I think this is clearly and obviously false. We learn what things mean by interacting with society. Without society, there is no significant language use. Children raised in issolation agree upon the meaning of their made up words by mutual social interactions. In essence they agree that certain words should have certain meanings. Collectively, societies as a whole do much the same thing, except that many words already have an agreed upon meaning--but new word/meaning combinations can be agreed to at any time. That's how new words are "coined" and enter the lexicon.

The human mind is obviously such that this sort of "searching for language" is an innate trait. But it is social interaction that pollinates it and brings it to fruition.

You might wonder how, since there is no social object called English, we can communicate. This is where my analogue to the human eye comes in. Like a person's I-Language, which is genetically determined, a person's eyes are also genetically determined. And so, society plays no role in the growth and use of eyesight. But do you then ask: How do we see the same things, if there is no social object called Eyesight?

While I see what you're trying to do with this analogy now, I'm still not sure it works all that well.

If a person's eye's produce poor eyesight, they go and get a pair of glasses, and social interaction plays a role in helping them to see better. Depending on how bad the person's eyes are, there may not be any recognizable entity called [eyesight], if it weren't for the non-genetic element called [glasses]. If one eye is weak, wearing the right glasses can prevent the weak eye from going blind.

Similarly, a camera can have "eyesight" of a sort... without any genetic material at all. It is a purely social creation that mimics the eye and can actually do it one better by preserving what the eye would have seen in a public format--allowing others to see it as well.

Although it's a poor analogy (but no worse thay your eye analogy was) we might compare the eye to an I-Language, and the "same" image that is captured by the camera (instead of the eye) would be compared to the E-Language.

... the way to look at language is as a biological/psychological object, unique to each individual; like memory, for which there is no social object called Memory that we all share. Language (or, our I-Language) is an expression of our genes.

I agree with this much. There is no E-Language that resides in a mind or brain. But by the same tokein, there is no I-language that resides in a society somewhere.

E and I languages are reciprocal in nature--and where they reside is only one of the ways in which they are different.

I hope that helps clear my position up.

Clearer, yes. lol. But I still mostly disagree.

formal languages (like arithmetic) are far less social than common speech. So I seems to me that if you agree that formal language is social you are necessarily conceeding that common speech is social.

I completely disagree here. I would say that formal languages are far more social than natural language.

It wasn't a logical argument... so saying it "isn't sound" has no meaning in the formal sense. And in the informal sense it is nothing more than an unsubstantiated opinion--and one which I suspect most people would disagree with. If social language has no truth, then what is it we're talking about when we speak of "truth". How can truth not be truth? What could it possibly mean to say there is no truth, but yet there's truth?

These are things that you do virtually nothing to explain.

You're right, I didn't use "sound" correctly. I meant "true." But I still think the conditional is false. I don't think it is the case that if language is not socially determined, then the word "truth" has no meaning. I think this because "truth" could take a private meaning, as a part of a private language. So, obviously, the conditional then fails if you agree with that.

If you cede this point then (as far as I'm concerned) you necessarily also cede the point that language is based on context... because this is an example of context being employed.

It only has relevance to formal languages, since we were talking about: "If we are using a formal language, then we need to know that fact otherwise we won't understand what the vocabulary of that language refers to." So, since I think there is a definite distinction between formal and natural languages, it doesn't tell you anything about what I think about natural languages. It only says that I agreed with you on formal languages.

Consider the statement,
(R) ..."It is raining."
Is this a true or a false statement?
The only way we can make that determination is by placing it in context. If Tom comes into a dry room and utters (R) it is clearly not true that it is raining inside the room. But if it is raining outside the building, we allow that the statement is true, because the definition of the word rain implies that it is not something that occurs inside buildings...

I disagree with that. We might use "rain" as in: The sprinklers are raining on us. In which case, it is raining inside the building.

...This illuminates two types of context. One is the fact that we have to look out the window to know whether (R) is true. The other involves using our common sense about the definition, and so knowing when it makes sense to assume we MUST be being rained on for (R) to be true. Context tells us that because we are inside a building, we cannot simply assume (R) is false just because we are dry.

Another type of context involves personal perspective. For instance, suppose your in a car, and the air is so full of moisture that although it is not raining (for those people outside of the car) beads of water collect on the windshield as the car moves along. Now, if you're looking out the front window, context tells you that it is raining. But if you look out the side window, context tells you that it is not raining. In one case, you look and observe that the conditions that define raining are being meet, while in the other you observe that those conditions are not being meet.

In none of these cases did the syntax of (R) change. And since the syntax did not change, the variations in our understanding of (R) CANNOT possibly be due to syntax. It's just not logically possible.

We are talking about what determines meaning. In these examples, we already have meaning for "rain" and "raining," so I don't see what relevance they have. They just show how we might use words in relation to our environment. So before we go into those contexts, we might have rules that say: If X, then "rain" (I'm not saying we do, just an example) and so context plays no role in determining meaning, as the rules have already set it.

I'm not really sure what a [social object] is supposed to mean.

Neither do I. What I was trying to get across, I think, was that language is not a shared, social, thing, that we might call English, and that we all speak. So, when someone says, "all English speakers speak an identical language," the "identical language" is taken as a shared thing. (Whatever that is.)

Normal children raised together but with little or no interaction with speaking adults human beings (i.e. the children of mute parents who live in an issolate location) have been found to create a relatively complex language that is unique to the children. So yes, there is something to be said for the notion that language is an inherent human trait.

This, however, does not imply that language is not a highly social trait. A child raised alone, (say by wolves, or mute parents) will not develop a similar language. The purpose of language is to communicate, and communicating is necessarily a social trait.

We might use language socially, like on social occasions. I am not denying that, only a solipsist would. I am concerned here with how meaning is determined.

Yes, of course language has an internal aspect. It also has an external aspect. Having one does not mutually exclude having the other.

Whether I agree with this depends on what you mean by "external aspect." I don't understand how you are using it, so I don't know whether I agree or not. What I would say is this: the meaning of language is determined internally. And in fact that language is an internal faculty, which has "external aspects" (but of no relevance to the language itself.)

I would say the appropriate way to approach language is to understand that there are two reciprocal aspects which interrelated and interconnected--just as are [concepts] and [physical objects].

Certainly, just as we can separate [semantics] from [syntax], and study them separately, we can separate the I and E aspects of language and study them separately. But it makes no sense to me to suppose that one and only one of these aspects should be considered valid. They are not mutually exclusive... in fact, they are mutually interdependant.

The E-Language tells us nothing about language though, since language is internal and so determined before it comes anywhere near the level of an E-Language.

This is exactly analogous to saying that you think there are individual animals that [purr, have four legs, whiskers, fur, flexible spines, etc]. but there aren't any "socal objects" called "cats".

There are no "cats", just individual animals of unknowable and unnamable nature. But then that implies that there also are no "animals". There is nothing called "individual" there is nothing called "unknowable" and so on. such a conjecture makes a mockery of the notion of an I-language.

Ok, so there is a concept cat. But if we want to study cats, we don't study the concept cat. We study individual cats. The same is true of language. That is, if we want to talk about the language of an individual, then studying the concept language, or coincidentally the E-Language, will tell us nothing about the language of that individual. Again, the concept language does not determined the actual I-Language (as concepts are conceptual, and have no impact on physical processes).

Yes, each individual has an I-language that is unique to their own mind (at an given momen... it changes from one instant to the next, as new sights are seen and thoughts are had which modify the language constantly). But just as a dozen people can follow a recipie for soup and each version of the soup will be a little different, because of minute differences in how much of an ingredient is used or perhaps because margarine is substituted for butter, etc. SO TOO, each individual I-language is unique, and yet they collectively define the E-language, just as the recipe defines all of the soups collectively.

The analogue doesn't work, as it has things backwards. In making soup, you start with the (social) recipe - which then determines the actual individual soup. But this is not analogues to language, and so useless.

The available data parameters are the contextual situations in which the I-Language is learned. If a child lives in a mansion with his rich parents, he will learn a slightly different meaning for the word "house" than a child who lives in a one-room shack with his poor parents. This is most definitely social. If a boy is the smallest person in a family who are all over 6'3" tall, he will have a different notion of what it means to be small, than the smallest person in a family that maxes out at 5'3". Again, that's a meaning with is learned by the social context in which the child is raised.

Subsequent exposure to other people will modify the meanings of their terms--making the meaning of [small] more and more similar as they encounter more people--but individual differences in their I-language arose from the differences in the social context in which they learned.

I think this is clearly and obviously false. We learn what things mean by interacting with society. Without society, there is no significant language use. Children raised in issolation agree upon the meaning of their made up words by mutual social interactions. In essence they agree that certain words should have certain meanings. Collectively, societies as a whole do much the same thing, except that many words already have an agreed upon meaning--but new word/meaning combinations can be agreed to at any time. That's how new words are "coined" and enter the lexicon.

If the child would learn the different meaning for the world "house," then, I would imagine, that that was because the word "house" is used differently. I agree with you here that society plays some role. But ultimately meaning falls back to the internal rules, I can't see it any other way.

If a person's eye's produce poor eyesight, they go and get a pair of glasses, and social interaction plays a role in helping them to see better. Depending on how bad the person's eyes are, there may not be any recognizable entity called [eyesight], if it weren't for the non-genetic element called [glasses]. If one eye is weak, wearing the right glasses can prevent the weak eye from going blind.

I'm not talking about how well we can use our eyes (that would be equivalent to the E-Language) My point was that the development of eyesight is internal, and has nothing to do with society. So the I-Eyesight determines the eyes, not the E-Eyesight. Same with language.

I agree with this much. There is no E-Language that resides in a mind or brain. But by the same tokein, there is no I-language that resides in a society somewhere.

E and I languages are reciprocal in nature--and where they reside is only one of the ways in which they are different.

But the E-Language has no place in language development, and so language meaning. That falls to the I-Language. A further point: if language is internal, then talking about an E-Language is pointless as it tells us nothing about language (the I-Language). And in fact, the I-Language is the only thing that makes sense - if language is internal, which it is.

I completely disagree here. I would say that formal languages are far more social than natural language.

It appears we're still using differen definitions of "social". So let me distinguish between my definition as social interaction and yours as a communal entity.

You're right, I didn't use "sound" correctly. I meant "true." But I still think the conditional is false. I don't think it is the case that if language is not socially determined, then the word "truth" has no meaning. I think this because "truth" could take a private meaning, as a part of a private language. So, obviously, the conditional then fails if you agree with that.

Fair enough, and given your 'technical definition' of [socially determined] this statement is probably true. If you totally disregard the E-language as a valid entity, and perception isn't an issue... then the I-language doesn't involve a lot of social interaction. You still have to learn it through social interaction, but we don't have to rely on social context to think about ideas that we already know. That's becasue in the I-language each word is a differnt word, even if in the E-language it is the same.

For example, love is a single word in the E-language. But in the I-language this singular E-language term becomes several distinct terms... for example, 1) a strong feeling. 2) a zero score in tennis. 3) sexual intercourse. Even within the (1) definition, there are many gradients... for example, there is a) love between man and wife. b) love between siblings. c) love between friends. d) love for a child. e) love for a pet. f) love for my new shoes. g) love for pizza. Each of these TYPES of love are distinctly different.

Each person is unique. One person may experience (love 1a) as crazy, hollywood, floating on the clouds love, while another may experience it as strong commitment, and the desire to be with the person. Each experience of love is unique. But the person who is thinking about love knows which type of love they are thinking about. They don't require social interaction to determine this, because it is already pre-determined in their mind. Each unique type of love is a distinctly different mental idea--and when they refer to love mentally, they know exactly which one they are referring to.

But the thing about language is that its most fundamental purpose is to communicate. We use the I-language to communicate with ourselves (so to speak). But the E-language is used to communicate with other people--who do not share our mind. They have no way of knowing which I-language meaning the person has in mind or how exactly that person defines their I-language meaning. Thus, the listener must use social interaction (context) to determine which meaning is intended.

Is this something we can agree on... or do you still claim to disagree with me?

It only has relevance to formal languages, since we were talking about: "If we are using a formal language, then we need to know that fact otherwise we won't understand what the vocabulary of that language refers to." So, since I think there is a definite distinction between formal and natural languages, it doesn't tell you anything about what I think about natural languages. It only says that I agreed with you on formal languages.

Wrong. I just as easily could have said, "If we're using a natural language, then we need to know that fact otherwise we won't understand what the vocabulary of that language refers to." And it would have been equally true. If I'm thinking [geometric point] because I'm stuck in a formal language and you refer to a regular point, that's going to cause confusion. It doesn't matter which perspective we're in... only that there are more than one and we need to know which way of thinking to adopt.

I disagree with that. We might use "rain" as in: The sprinklers are raining on us. In which case, it is raining inside the building.

That's why I specified that Tom comes into a DRY room... because I was actually thinking of using this example to further prove my point. (I didn't because my posts are too long already).

This example, clearly shows how context plays a role. It supports my position--not yours. For Tom knows that [rain] can be used in such a way, but if the room is water free, Tom knows (from the context of a dry room) that that is not how it is being used in this case. Whereas if it is raining, he will probably conclude (from the context of falling water) that the statement refers to what is happening inside the room. It may also be raining outside, and then it is appropriate to both interpretations. But either case IS an interpretation--which means that it relies on context to provide the clues that tell Tom which perspective is the most appropriate one to adopt.

We are talking about what determines meaning. In these examples, we already have meaning for "rain" and "raining," so I don't see what relevance they have.

I disagree... we do not have a single, specific and invariable meaning for rain. What we have is a collection of very different but potential meanings. The context in which the statement is used tells us which meaning is most probably the one intended.

Again, in the strict I-language sense, we already know which sense we intend--so we don't have to interpret our own intentions.

What I was trying to get across.... was that language is not a shared, social, thing, that we might call English, and that we all speak. So, when someone says, "all English speakers speak an identical language," the "identical language" is taken as a shared thing. (Whatever that is.)

Obviously, the collective E-language, English, is not an absolutely specific and singular thing; that would be absurd. But neither is the I-language, as it is constantly changing too, as we learn more and encounter new physical examples that modify our previous definitions.

Lots of things are vague: [cloud], [heap], [love]... these are just some of the terms that are highly vague. When we refer to a cloud, we are not referring to a single, specific thing... because the definition of what a cloud is includes the fact that it is necessarily vague. (i.e. the Problem of the Many) In much the same way,

I-language is temproally vage because it changes over time. Clearly, my I-language as an infant was very different than my I-language as a philosophizing adult. But at any given time it is what it is, because it involves only one person--and so (for the most part) it is isolated to one "place", so to speak.
E-language is also temproally vage and changes over time. But it is also spread out over many minds, and so it is also vague in the way that a cloud is--having vague boundaries at any given moment. Which is one reason why we need social context to help us decide which meaning is intended during a given social interaction.

We might use language socially, like on social occasions. I am not denying that, only a solipsist would. I am concerned here with how meaning is determined.

Depends on what you mean by 'determined".

We learn (determine) what a word means by having someone tell us what [physical objects] (and so forth) go with what [terms]. This learning process is a social interaction. As is the subsequent learning that we engage in as our I-language changes. But at any given moment, we determine what we mean (internally) by what we mean (internally).

As I see it, the problem is that this doesn't really tell us anything useful about how language is used. It's like [x=x]... it's obviously true, but it doesn't tell us anything useful about the [nature of x].

Whether I agree with this depends on what you mean by "external aspect."

Fair enough.

I say that we learn Internal meaning (the I-language) by observing external things and having them paired with external terms (the E-language). A child's mother points to a dog and says, "Oh, look at the pretty dog." So the child learns to associate the term "dog" with his own internal meaning of the animal he saw.

An infant who has learned to use the word "dog" to refer to the family pet, may point to the neighbor's [cat] and say "dog". The child hasn't learned what it is that distinguishes "cat" from "dog". Their I-language does not yet match the E-language of the community that they belong to. Their I-language is highly vague and poorly defined. But the mother says, "No, sweety, that's not a cat, that's a dog." And the child begins to mentally group [physical objects] into those things that are [dog] and those that are [not dog]--constantly refining their I-language, so that it more closely approximates the E-language. The more examples of things that are [dog] the more capable he will be of accurately identifying physical objects that are E-language [dogs].

Similarly, I as an adult have developed my ideas on philosophy in new and unique ways. Many of the terms I use in my own I-language differ dramatically from the E-language. For example, I define an set as {that which has elements}, which means that (in terms of an enumeration set) the empty set is an oxymoron that has no meaning--since it is literally the [thing with elements that has no elements].

My point is that my I-language has become more complex... and veered off onto a uniquely different path from the E-language. And when it comes to discussing these sorts of differences... it becomes very difficult when you arbitrarily discount the E-language as being non-existent, (or without value and not worth considering).

If, on the other hand we mean the static sense of determined... then yes, Tom's meaning for X is determined internally--or inside of Tom. But again, this tells us nothing meaningful. Where else would we find what Tom means but inside Tom?

The E-Language tells us nothing about language though, since language is internal and so determined before it comes anywhere near the level of an E-Language.

I suppose it depends on what you want to know about language. If you want to know how we apply social context to determine how the environment were in changes how we interpret what someone says, then I think it is clearly more appropriate to study the E-language. If you want to study how we transform a sentence so that it means the same thing even though we may be using different words or the same words in a differnt order, then perhaps I-language may be appropriate... But even in this second case, where do we get the raw data for our actual study? We get it largely from the E-language... as we collect sample sentences and the feelings of various people as to which sentences mean the same thing and which do not.

For example, if you asked me a question about an [empty set] I may well provide a different answer than someone else would. So I can't simply base my research into language on my own I-language. Else, my results will be inaccurate and inappropriate for everyone else who defines [empty set] differently than I do.

It's a bit paradoxical, in a number of ways. Yes, we are never closer to pure LANGUAGE than the I-language. But the I-language is hidden inside of us and is not easily examined. This means that it takes very poorly to being studied. I have a unique definition of [cat] but I can't easily explain how my I-language definition of cat differs from yours. E-language, on the other hand, is public and thus easily observed--and this means that it takes to being studied relatively well.

Ok, so there is a concept cat. But if we want to study cats, we don't study the concept cat. We study individual cats. The same is true of language. That is, if we want to talk about the language of an individual, then studying the concept language, or coincidentally the E-Language, will tell us nothing about the language of that individual. Again, the concept language does not determined the actual I-Language (as concepts are conceptual, and have no impact on physical processes).

First, I go back to my earlier statement about how I-language is private and thus not so easily observed. Often, we don't even fully understand how we define things in our own I-langugage, since much of our language facility is subconsciously processed.

Secondly, When we study [actual individual cats], we don't just study a [single individual cat] and assume our studies are finished. We study different types of cats. A Siameese cat is different from a Persial. Both are different from a Lion. And all three are different from a [statue of a cat], which is also a "type of cat". When we study more than one cat, we are no longer studing an individual cat... we are studing cats in general. We are studying the [concept cat]... because that's what a concept is, basically... it is the amalgamation of all the actual things which we call by the name of that concept. So when we study many I-languages, we are IN FACT studying the E-language... because that's what the E-language is... the vague nature of all the I-languages taken as a collective whole.

And just as we do not have to study [all physical cats] to get a detailed and accurate [concept of cat] so to we do not need to study all I-languages to gain a detailed and accurate understanding of the E-language. In both cases, the reason is because although each cat is different, there are statistical norms. Once you've seen a fair number of cats, you will have seen the majority of what is possible for cats to express physically-- and most of the rest can be assertained by logical deduction. For example, we don't have to see a 3-legged cat to know that such a thing is possible--or to recognize such a cat when we see it--because we have seen humans with missing limbs, and we can creatively superimpose one concept onto the other.

The analogue doesn't work, as it has things backwards. In making soup, you start with the (social) recipe - which then determines the actual individual soup. But this is not analogues to language, and so useless.

It is analogous... We learn what a [cat] is by other people pointing out [cats] and telling us that they are "cats". The other person's pre-existing knowledge about what a [cat] is, is analogous to the recipie (or E-language). We follow the recipe, when we adopt there words. The E-language, of course, is the language of the whole collective community, and we get input from many people/sources telling us what a [cat] is. Pictures in learn-to-read books. Neighbors. Movies. Siblings. And so forth. So we aren't just learning a single other person's I-language... we are learning the recipe, and adopting our ideas of the best from many different I-languages (i.e. the E-language). When we are young (following the recipe for the first time) we are uncertain and have to refer back to the recipie (E-language) frequently. But as we get older (and more sure of our selves and our abilties to cook) we begin to bend the rules and create our own I-language micro recipes.

But the E-Language has no place in language development, and so language meaning. That falls to the I-Language. ...

Of course it does! We don't learn what a cat is from ourselves. We learn from others.

If we were raised by wolves, we would still form an internal I-language that had a meaning for [cat]... but it would not be the SAME I-language.

In a way, I think these two language sets are analogous to sculpter carving an image in a block of wood.
The I-language is like the block of wood. The E-language is like the carving tools. And the meaning is like the final image that we end up with. The [meaning/images] is not exclusively in either the [I-language/wood] or the [E-language/tools], but collectively in the union of both. If we have limited [E-language/tools] because we were raised by wolves (only have a butter knife instead of a sharp blade) then our final images (the sophistication of our language) will be crude. Conversely, if we have a good block of wood (a sharp, word oriented mind) then the tools that we use will also produce a
finer final product.

The secret is both working together. And just as we must study both the nature of the wood and the nature of the tools (and the carving techniques, etc) in order to understand how the whole process of carving--so too we must study both the I-language and the E-language to fully understand how language (in all its glory) works.

Antone wrote:

In a way, I think these two language sets are analogous to sculpter carving an image in a block of wood.
The I-language is like the block of wood. The E-language is like the carving tools. And the meaning is like the final image that we end up with. The [meaning/images] is not exclusively in either the [I-language/wood] or the [E-language/tools], but collectively in the union of both. If we have limited [E-language/tools] because we were raised by wolves (only have a butter knife instead of a sharp blade) then our final images (the sophistication of our language) will be crude. Conversely, if we have a good block of wood (a sharp, word oriented mind) then the tools that we use will also produce a
finer final product.

A useful analogy, which reminds me of Chomskyan deep structure (l-language plus e-language). I agree with the wolf language example to illustrate the sociolinguistic process.. However I think that e-language is indistinguishable from l-language, unless Antone is referring to langue(l-language) and parole(e-language).

A useful analogy, which reminds me of Chomskyan deep structure (l-language plus e-language). I agree with the wolf language example to illustrate the sociolinguistic process. However I think that e-language is indistinguishable from l-language, unless Antone is referring to langue(l-language) and parole(e-language).

Actually, I-language and E-language are Metaman's terms, which I have adoped here to make our discussion easier.

I-language is the internal language that a single person has inside their own mind.
E-language is the external language that a community holds collectively.

BTW, I am familiar with Chomsky's idea of deep structure... and I believe it is probably a valid model. I did a college paper on how the word "there" can be used to transform a sentence, and I considered using some sort of example like that in my response to metaman, but didn't want to take the time to research an example. lol. Lazy me.

Apologies to Metaman, it's me that is lazy not Antone. I have not yet understood parole and langue but Antone's explanation of E and L language reminds me of what I think I understand, although the two explanations do not entirely coincide.

Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are linguistic terms used by Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs, while parole describes the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.[1] The distinction is similar to that made about language by Wilhelm von Humboldt, between energeia (active doing) and ergon (the product of that doing).[2]
Wikipedia

Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are linguistic terms used by Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs, while parole describes the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.

There are many ways to break down the topic of lanuage, so that we are studying specific aspects of the whole of what language is. One such field is semiotics (the study of signs). I'm somewhat familiar with Saussure, and he did a lot of work on signs--so what you're talking about probably has to do with semiotics.

I could be wrong, but I think metaman is saying that semiotics is not a valid way to study language. Or, if some of it is worth studying, then (at the very least) there are vast areas of it that are NOT.

BTW, another who is influential in this field of semiotics is Charles Sanders Peirce.

My own views are a bit different from either of theirs. But I've done a fair amount of thinking about the topic in general.

I am struggling to understand, Antone, BTW I like your avatar which injects some humility into our pride of reasoning.

It appears we're still using differen definitions of "social". So let me distinguish between my definition as social interaction and yours as a communal entity.

Ok, in the future I will be clear about which I mean.


I would just like to clarify what I mean when I use “I-Language” and “E-Language.” Since I am trying to use them as Chomsky uses them, I’ll quote him:

The E-Language is “a pairing of sentences and meanings…where the language is ‘used by a population’ when certain regularities ‘in action or belief’ hold among the population with reference to the language.” And, “in a sense that the construct is understood independently of the properties of the mind/brain.”

(When I used “social” I was trying to highlight this idea of language independent “of the properties of the mind/brain” that is “used by a population”—the communal entity that you pointed out.)

The I-Language is “some element of the mind of the person who knows the language” and that for someone to know a language is for their “mind/brain to be in a certain state; more narrowly, for the language faculty…to be in a certain state.”

You still have to learn it through social interaction, but we don't have to rely on social context to think about ideas that we already know.

Speaking precisely, I don’t think we learn language. I think the proper way to describe what happens is that the language faculty grows. Our mind/brain starts at a state 0, then grows into state 1, then state 2, and so on until it reaches the state at which we might say “this persons knows this language.”

But the thing about language is that its most fundamental purpose is to communicate.

Here, I’m not so sure. And I think the answer lies in evolutionary psychology/biology. (Not my strong point.)

We use the I-language to communicate with ourselves (so to speak). But the E-language is used to communicate with other people--who do not share our mind.

Given the above definitions of I-Language I’m not sure what it could mean to say that we use the I-Language to communicate with ourselves. I mean if the I-Language is an internal state of mind/brain, then I don’t quite understand that.

They have no way of knowing which I-language meaning the person has in mind or how exactly that person defines their I-language meaning. Thus, the listener must use social interaction (context) to determine which meaning is intended.

Is this something we can agree on... or do you still claim to disagree with me?

I disagree. I think we can communicate because our I-Languages are similar; that is, they have developed similarly. So it doesn’t seem that we “must use social interaction to determine which meaning is intended.”

Although, I agree with you in a sense. For instance, we might socially interact to clarify our meanings, or to select the meanings we want (as we have already done several times in this thread). But I don’t see that as a problem, as ultimately the meanings of the words are properties of our mind/brains (of our I-Languages); which is all I want to say. We use social interaction to select the meanings, not determine.

Wrong. I just as easily could have said, "If we're using a natural language, then we need to know that fact otherwise we won't understand what the vocabulary of that language refers to." And it would have been equally true. If I'm thinking [geometric point] because I'm stuck in a formal language and you refer to a regular point, that's going to cause confusion. It doesn't matter which perspective we're in... only that there are more than one and we need to know which way of thinking to adopt.

I’m OK with selecting our meaning socially; I just don’t see how the meaning of natural language can be determined socially. And you have to remember that I make a distinction between natural and formal language. Formal language seems to me an example of an E-Language. And as a result, there can be different axioms and rules of inference that yield the same formal language. Which set of axioms and rules are the right ones? Well, there isn’t a question of rightness regarding E-Languages. But, if we take the I-Language, then there is a question of rightness. And because natural language is innate, there is a right set of rules that we can discover.

One difference between formal and natural language is that we stipulate the rules of formal language, yet we discover the rules of natural language—because natural language is a part of the natural world, in our brain/minds.

This example, clearly shows how context plays a role. It supports my position--not yours. For Tom knows that [rain] can be used in such a way, but if the room is water free, Tom knows (from the context of a dry room) that that is not how it is being used in this case. Whereas if it is raining, he will probably conclude (from the context of falling water) that the statement refers to what is happening inside the room. It may also be raining outside, and then it is appropriate to both interpretations. But either case IS an interpretation--which means that it relies on context to provide the clues that tell Tom which perspective is the most appropriate one to adopt…

…we do not have a single, specific and invariable meaning for rain. What we have is a collection of very different but potential meanings. The context in which the statement is used tells us which meaning is most probably the one intended.

But look: the meaning of “rain” has to be already determined for Tom to know when to use it—under what environmental conditions will he use “rain,” that is. He walks into a dry room. He knows the meaning of “dry” and “rain” and so infers (from the environment) that it cannot be raining inside the room. That’s fine. We, from our social settings, select our words; but our words already have meaning, before we enter that social setting.

Obviously, the collective E-language, English, is not an absolutely specific and singular thing; that would be absurd. But neither is the I-language, as it is constantly changing too, as we learn more and encounter new physical examples that modify our previous definitions.

I-language is temproally vage because it changes over time. Clearly, my I-language as an infant was very different than my I-language as a philosophizing adult. But at any given time it is what it is, because it involves only one person--and so (for the most part) it is isolated to one "place", so to speak.

Agreed.

E-language is also temproally vage and changes over time. But it is also spread out over many minds, and so it is also vague in the way that a cloud is--having vague boundaries at any given moment. Which is one reason why we need social context to help us decide which meaning is intended during a given social interaction.

I agree we need “social context to help us decide which meaning is intended.” But I don’t understand how the E-Language can be “spread out over many minds.” The E-Language is independent from mind.

We learn (determine) what a word means by having someone tell us what [physical objects] (and so forth) go with what [terms]. This learning process is a social interaction.

I say that we learn Internal meaning (the I-language) by observing external things and having them paired with external terms (the E-language). A child's mother points to a dog and says, "Oh, look at the pretty dog." So the child learns to associate the term "dog" with his own internal meaning of the animal he saw.

An infant who has learned to use the word "dog" to refer to the family pet, may point to the neighbor's [cat] and say "dog". The child hasn't learned what it is that distinguishes "cat" from "dog". Their I-language does not yet match the E-language of the community that they belong to. Their I-language is highly vague and poorly defined. But the mother says, "No, sweety, that's not a cat, that's a dog." And the child begins to mentally group [physical objects] into those things that are [dog] and those that are [not dog]--constantly refining their I-language, so that it more closely approximates the E-language. The more examples of things that are [dog] the more capable he will be of accurately identifying physical objects that are E-language [dogs].

I was reading a book yesterday called Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. And came across a sentence I didn’t understand. It was:

“The German Democratic Republic has dissolved into its larger, richer, German neighbor and erstwhile enemy.”

Well, I understood most of the sentence except the word “erstwhile.” But from the role it was playing in the sentence I had an intuition that it meant something like: previous, prior, old. I then checked my dictionary, which told me that it meant: former. So I was right (or at least, on the right lines). But no one pointed out to me what “erstwhile” meant. Also, there are only a few words that you can actually point out and say look: “this is an X!” For instance, you might see some water, and someone points that to you and says “water.” But this raises a problem. How do you know they are talking about the water? Perhaps they are referring to the colour of the water. This is a serious problem for the view that we point things out and say: this is X, and so attaches to X that meaning.

With the dog example. How does the child know that “dog” refers to the whole animal, and not its leg, or its colour, or its teeth, or even its biological family? Or take a word that isn’t a noun. For instance, the word “and.” How does a child learn when to use the word “and”? Not from someone pointing out and saying: this is when you use “and.” I think this is further evidence that the E-Language plays no role in language.

First, I go back to my earlier statement about how I-language is private and thus not so easily observed. Often, we don't even fully understand how we define things in our own I-langugage, since much of our language facility is subconsciously processed.

Secondly, When we study [actual individual cats], we don't just study a [single individual cat] and assume our studies are finished. We study different types of cats. A Siameese cat is different from a Persial. Both are different from a Lion. And all three are different from a [statue of a cat], which is also a "type of cat". When we study more than one cat, we are no longer studing an individual cat... we are studing cats in general. We are studying the [concept cat]... because that's what a concept is, basically... it is the amalgamation of all the actual things which we call by the name of that concept. So when we study many I-languages, we are IN FACT studying the E-language... because that's what the E-language is... the vague nature of all the I-languages taken as a collective whole.

Studying numerous I-Languages wouldn’t lead us to the study of the E-Language, rather, by your analogue of cat, the study of the concept of I-Language, which is distinct from the E-Language; as the E-Language is independent from mind, whereas the I-Language is not.

So, to say that the set of I-Languages {a,b,c,d,…n} = the E-Language leads to contradiction; as you are saying that a set of mind dependent (internal) objects = a mind independent (external) concept. I don’t think that is quite right.

Of course it does! We don't learn what a cat is from ourselves. We learn from others.

I don’t think we do, for reasons given above.

In a way, I think these two language sets are analogous to sculpter carving an image in a block of wood.
The I-language is like the block of wood. The E-language is like the carving tools. And the meaning is like the final image that we end up with. The [meaning/images] is not exclusively in either the [I-language/wood] or the [E-language/tools], but collectively in the union of both. If we have limited [E-language/tools] because we were raised by wolves (only have a butter knife instead of a sharp blade) then our final images (the sophistication of our language) will be crude. Conversely, if we have a good block of wood (a sharp, word oriented mind) then the tools that we use will also produce a
finer final product.

This isn’t quite accurate. I think it would be better if it were: the block of wood is the child in the initial state 0. The design of the tools is the child’s social experience that set the tools. And the tools are the I-Language, which “carve” a language into the child. The final product is the child in the final state N.

The E-Language is “a pairing of sentences and meanings…where the language is ‘used by a population’ when certain regularities ‘in action or belief’ hold among the population with reference to the language.” And, “in a sense that the construct is understood independently of the properties of the mind/brain.”

The problem is that I don't think you can create a pairing of sentences and meanings that is devoid of context. The sentence,
I listened to the sound
has at least two possible meanings. In one, sound is a type of noise. In another, a sound is a wide channel linking two large bodies of water. Or as a minor variation, it could be a long inlet or arm of the sea. A sound can also be the swim blader of certain fish, so if a zooologist had a stethoscope (or some other instrument) he could be listenting to this bladder.

I see two possible interpretations: 1) there is no such pairing, or 2) many (if not most) sentences can be associated with a number of different possible meanings. If we allow for the first meaning then it seems there is no such E-language. And if we allow for the second meaning then it seems obvious that this pairing of sentence and meaning cannot be understood without reference to the context in which the sentence is being used--which means that the meaning is mind dependent. For the speaker, this is so because he knows which of the meanings he has IN MIND. And for the listener, it is mind dependent because he has to infer the appropriate meaning using the social context and the deductive powers of his mind.

Thus, as a definition, I would suggest that one could argue that Chomsky's E-language does not actually refer to anything--at least not as expressed. Intuitively, I think I understand what Chomsky is attempting to refer to when he says, E-language, but because his definition is flawed and innaccurate (to the entity I have in mind) it makes discussing the E-language in a meaningful way a bit difficult.

I'm not saying we can't divide our thinking into I-language and E-language... but I think language is the fusion of both. It is overly restricting to talk about one without the other--just as it is to try to talk about [concepts] or [physical objects] as if one and only one has any implication in philosophy.

Speaking precisely, I don’t think we learn language. I think the proper way to describe what happens is that the language faculty grows. Our mind/brain starts at a state 0, then grows into state 1, then state 2, and so on until it reaches the state at which we might say “this persons knows this language.”

I find this to be such a bizzarely irrational statement that I'm not sure how to address it without sounding insulting. lol.

If we don't "learn" langauage, then why not say that we don't learn MATH or PHILOSOPHY. Our brain simply grows to a more advance (or complicated) state... and the math is magically there. Only problem is, if you don't "study" math you don't pick it up. And the same is true of language. If a child is not exposed to an E-language, he doesn't learn it. That's why I can't speak Russian, Japanese, French... and a whole host of other languages. If our brain simply developed the ability to speak (without learning) we would all be able to speak all of these languages--or more likely there would only be one language.

Don't get me wrong, I'm NOT saying that we don't have a natural faculty for language, or that people who grow up without an E-lanaguage won't spontaneously create one of their own. But even in that case the people who speak that made-up E-language must "learn" what they've agreed that the words will mean.

We use the I-language to communicate with ourselves (so to speak). ...

Given the above definitions of I-Language I’m not sure what it could mean to say that we use the I-Language to communicate with ourselves. I mean if the I-Language is an internal state of mind/brain, then I don’t quite understand that.

There are many different ways to use our mind. Much of it is subconscious. When I get excited, my brain communicates with my heart to make it beat faster. I am not consciously aware of this, so clearly my conscious mind is not causing this physilogical effect. But my perceptions, (of which I am conscous) help determine when I do get excited, so clearly my conscious mind is "communicating" with my subconscious mind to tell it what to do.

Similarly, there is [left] and [right] brain activity which is very different. One processes more rational types of thinking like speech and logic. The other processes more irrational types of thinking like spatical orientation, etc. When doctors cut a Patient's corpus callosum (the connection between left and right brain) they sometimes find that one of their hands tends to act independently. Their right hand may be trying to button up their shirt while their left is trying to unbutton it. When the patients speeks aloud, and tells the "offending" hand what needs to be done, the hand is much more likely to do what it is supposed to do. Clearly then, during normal brain opperation, the two hemispheres are "communicating" with one another. In a way, I believe this unconscious communication should be considered a part of the I-language.

Most people tend to think in words--at least part of the time. When I look at a lamp, I don't need to think "lamp" to know what it is that I'm looking at. When I need to express what I'm seeing, the word "lamp" is there waiting. This is demonstrative of the of the left and right brain interacting. The part of the brain that recognizes what is and is not a tree (lets call it conceputal language) isn't all that good with (written/spoken) language--but it has a connection to the part of the brain that is good with these learned terms.
(BTW, I believe conceptual language is also something that animals possess.)
As I understand it, the I-language is the correspondence (or learned association) between this [conceptual language] and the [terms that are used by an E-language]. The [conceptual language] is something that we pick up naturally--we would be able to recognize a lamp, even if we didn't have a name for it--but the the E-language aspect of the I-language is something that we must learn...because knowing the term "lamp" is not innate to all people.

What this means is that we use the I-language to communicate with ourselves: left to right brain... rational to irrational... conscioius to subconscious... and so forth. Also, I don't know about other people, but I sometimes find that I don't "know" something until I've though about it in words. Obviously the idea originated inside my own mind, but on these occasions there can still be a "Yeah, you're right." sort of response when I think about the words I've just thought. I consider this to be a form of internal communication--we our informing ourselves about what it is that we think. Or more accurately, we are informing one half as to what the other half thinks.

I’m OK with selecting our meaning socially; I just don’t see how the meaning of natural language can be determined socially.

Okay, on this it appears we may be saying the same thing in two different ways.

Formal language seems to me an example of an E-Language. And as a result, there can be different axioms and rules of inference that yield the same formal language.

I don't think so. The axioms and rules are part of the language. There are only 5 parts of a formal system: 1) the alphabet (or symbols). 2) The rules of formation, which determine which strings of symbols are valid and which aren't. 3) Axioms, or a list of the valid strings that we are allowed to start with. 4) The Rules of Construction, which determine how we can take an axiom (or theorem) and modify it to create a new (and valid) theorem. Some rules of construction, can also create new theorem without using a pre-existing axiom or theorem. 5) Theorems, or a list of all the strings that have been (or can be) created using the rules.

That's all there is to a formal system. There is no assignment of meaning, that's called an interpretation, and it is a veneer that is appled from outside of the formal language itself.... And even the Metalanguage is not (strictly speaking) a part of the formal language. It is a language that allows us to talk about the formal language.

This is my understanding... and given it, I don't see how it is possible to derive the same "formal language" from different axioms and rules of inference.

Which set of axioms and rules are the right ones?

One way to determine if a set of axioms and rules are right is if they accurately model whatever it is you're trying to model. If a formal system accurately models mathematics, then it is correct. Different formal languages can reasonably effective in modeling the same thing. Although Godel's Incompleteness Theorem essentially suggests that it is impossible for a formal system to be both consistent and complete.

I believe Gocel's proof is flawed on this... and I believe the reason is because he does not distinguish between the innate difference in a [name] and the [thing being named]. Thus, he takes what is basically an infinite idea, names it, and then treats that name as a finite idea. This is an invalid leap of logic, and so invalidates his proof.

As per my earlier discussion, I believe the same distinction can be found in the I-languages... the [thing being named] is the [conceputal language] and name is the [E-language aspect of the I-language] or, in other words, it is the unique and "imprefect" internalization of the E-language.

Well, there isn’t a question of rightness regarding E-Languages. But, if we take the I-Language, then there is a question of rightness. And because natural language is innate, there is a right set of rules that we can discover.

This doesn't compute. Dictionary and grammar books are examples of guidelines for what is and isn't right in an E-language. On the other hand, my I-language is whatever I've developed it to be. I take one or more E-language, adopt those parts I like and reject those parts I do not... and that's the [non-conceptual part of my I-language]. For instance, I reject the traditional definition of an "empty set" as previously explained. In my I-language, an empty set MUST be an abstraction set... which means that it must contain [1 element]. That element is the [idea of nothing], which we write as {x:x is nothing}. The set has one elmenet, [x]. If can try to write this as an enumeration set as {...}, but a set is defined as [that which contains elements]... so {...} isn't a set because it contains no elements.

This whole logical structure, and the terms that I use to [name] these ideas are an innate part of my I-language. But I can speak to other people, because I also understand how my I-language differs from the E-language. Thus, when I'm talking to other people, instead of communicating with myself, I have to take into account these logical "flaws" in the E-language.

We, from our social settings, select our words; but our words already have meaning, before we enter that social setting.

Our words have multiple meanings... often diametrically opposed to one another.

I don’t understand how the E-Language can be “spread out over many minds.” The E-Language is independent from mind.

I don't think so. If that were the case, then it seems to me that natural language would never change. But it does change. The Romance languages are all from the same branch; they all evolved from the same origins... but over time each language went its own way. How does that happen if the E-language is independent from the I-language of many minds?

No, it happens BECAUSE there are many I-languages, each with the ability to adopt it's own variations of the E-language recipe. When enough people think the old E-language conventions are old and outdated and have developed the same I-language alternatives... then the E-language changes, and conforms to their I-language expectations. In a literal sense, then, 1 E-language = multiple I-languages.

Well, I understood most of the sentence except the word “erstwhile.” But from the role it was playing in the sentence I had an intuition that it meant something like: previous, prior, old. I then checked my dictionary, which told me that it meant: former. So I was right (or at least, on the right lines). But no one pointed out to me what “erstwhile” meant.

First, a child doesn't learn to walk by sitting down and memorizing something... and yet we still say that the child has learned to walk. So clearly, we don't have to learn in a typical, formal schooling type of setting. Second, you "picked up" this meaning because you were able to deduce it from the [context] of the sentence. So I would argue that context plays a vital role both in [learning] and in [deducing meaning after we've learned]. In addition, you yourself admitted that the dictionary pointed out what 'erstwhile" meant. It confirmed your intuitive understanding. If you had not looked it up, you would still have gotten that sense... and the next time you saw it used you could compare the sense of meaning that you got this next time with the sense that you got the first time... and each time you the meanings appeared to match up you would gain a greater certainty that your internal definition was the correct one.

I on the other hand, looked at that sentence and thought that erstwhile probably meant something like "diligent, vigilant, persistent and adamant". This meaning is also not a totally inappropriate deduction... given the meaning of ernest, and the context of the sentence. So if neither of us looked up the actual definition, and we both learned instead by deducing the meaning from context... we would both learn (or develop) very different I-language meanings for this term. If enough people sided with me, the E-language would eventually change. For example, puruse means to read something carefully... but most people use this term in a way that means to just glance at something; or read it casually. So many people use this term inappropriately that it is now probably more likely to have the second intended meaning than the first. And in another few decades or so is is likely that the E-language will officially make this switch.

Also, there are only a few words that you can actually point out and say look: “this is an X!” ... With the dog example. How does the child know that “dog” refers to the whole animal, and not its leg...

We just finished discussing how context plays a role in our language learning... and the same is true here. Suppose a child's father say, "It looks like the dog's leg is hurt." If the child knows all the words in this statement but [leg] and [hurt], he can intuitively get a sense of what the statement means by observing that the dog is limping. This is very similar to the way you deduced what "erstwhile" meant. The dog is limping... so he intuits that its leg is hurt. In his [conceptual language] the child understands the situation. Using other social clues, he understands that his father is referring to this same intuitive understanding that he has. So all that is necessary is to sort out the relationship between "leg" and "hurt". If the child doesn't understand at first, the father may gently take the dogs paw and say, "See its got a sliver in its paw."
From this--espeically when combined with other different situations which further reinforce our intuitions--we deduce that a "sliver" is a thing that can cause "hurt" and a "paw" is a thing at the end of a "leg" ... and so forth.

If we deduce wrongly during one learning encounter, we will find that our deductions do not fit another encounter--and we will deduce that either 1) our first notions were wrong, or 2) there are more than one meaning for the term being used.

Or take a word that isn’t a noun. For instance, the word “and.” How does a child learn when to use the word “and”? Not from someone pointing out and saying: this is when you use “and.” I think this is further evidence that the E-Language plays no role in language.

No there isn't a physical object that is an "and"... but we learn what "and" means by the way the term is used. Always, there are two objects or ideas. x and y. If the father says, "Go get x and y." And the child returns with only [x] the father will say, "You forgot to get y." And intuitively, it's pretty clear what "and" means.

The thing to understand is that we don't learn language from a single encounter. When the father refers to the color of a [black dog], the child distinguishes between [black] and [dog] becasue the next time the father sees a [white dog] he refers to dog, but not to black. Thus, the child knows that dog is what was the same in both instances... while [white and black] refer to things that are not the same. Thus, over time, the child learns what is [black] and what is [not black] just as he learns what is [dog] and what is [not dog].

The point is that not all the things we learn about are [physical objects] but for the young child, all the terms he learns about are closely related to [physical objects]. We know what between is because we observe three objects, [x, y, z] and in our [conceputal language] we understand the meaning of this... so when someone says, [y] is between [x and z] we know through deduction what "between" means.

More complex, abstract thoughts are composites of the simpler concrete thoughts. We learn what "love" is by observing how adults act, and what they do when they're talking about love. We intuit what they mean by listening to the descriptions in books and comparing those descriptions to our own feelings in various situations. That's why "being in love" often takes a person by surprise. "Oh my God, I'm in love!" is not all that uncommon a reaction to such an observation.

It doesn't matter how abstract an idea is... we learn what it means through a process of comparing two different things. One of those things is our intuitive/conceptual I-language and the other is the E-language. And by comparing those two things, we develop (learn) how to name increasingly complex ideas in what I have been calling the [E-language aspect of our I-language].

Studying numerous I-Languages wouldn’t lead us to the study of the E-Language, rather, by your analogue of cat, the study of the concept of I-Language, which is distinct from the E-Language; as the E-Language is independent from mind, whereas the I-Language is not.

To be more precise, the E-language is the area of overlap that is shared my many I-languages. Despite the uniqueness of each I-language, we can communicate with others becasue we share enough similarities in our I-language that the differences usually do not cause problems... Often this is because we can deduce, from [social interaction] or [sentence context] what the person means, even though we might not have the same identical meaning in our personal I-language. So the collective understanding which is so shared is the E-language. This can be formalized in dictionaries and grammar books... but it doesn't have to be. It's still an E-language, even if no one writes down the lexicon and rules.

As for the studying aspect... When we studying numerous I-languages (in order to understand the E-language, what we are doing is to observe and take note of statistical similarities. We see how many people [think one way] and how many [think the other way]. Regardless of how we (the scientist) think, the E-language is the statistical norm that dominates over the whole culture. The only way to determine what that NORM actually is is to study a large number of individual I-languages.

Thus, as a definition, I would suggest that one could argue that Chomsky's E-language does not actually refer to anything--at least not as expressed. Intuitively, I think I understand what Chomsky is attempting to refer to when he says, E-language, but because his definition is flawed and innaccurate (to the entity I have in mind) it makes discussing the E-language in a meaningful way a bit difficult.

I, and I think he, would agree with this. That is, the idea of an E-Language doesn’t make much sense—if I have read you correctly. I don’t know if you would propose a modification to the definition of E-Language, but as it stands I think it characterises the debate in philosophy about internalist and externalist theories of meaning. So, the internalist theory would study the I-Language, and the externalist the E-Language.

As you probably know Kripke and Putnam are externalists; they believe that meaning is not in the head (or Putnam’s “meaning ain’t in the head,” or whatever it was). Chomsky, on the other hand, is an internalist.

Speaking precisely, I don’t think we learn language. I think the proper way to describe what happens is that the language faculty grows.

I find this to be such a bizzarely irrational statement that I'm not sure how to address it without sounding insulting. lol.
If we don't "learn" langauage, then why not say that we don't learn MATH or PHILOSOPHY. Our brain simply grows to a more advance (or complicated) state... and the math is magically there.

If only this were true!

The reason is that maths and philosophy are not innate. Most likely, we have some kind of reasoning faculty, which we then use to do philosophy and maths. But maths and philosophy themselves have to be taught.

You have to remember that the I-Language is a biological module/organ. We don’t say that we learn to develop our arms; we say that our arms grow. We don’t say that we learn to develop eyes; we say that our eyes grow. The same is true of the I-Language. We don’t learn it—it is innate—and so it grows, like all other bodily organs.

Obviously, our I-Language needs social (environmental) input to get going. But this is true of all our bodily organs. For our eyes and arms to grow they need proteins, which we get from the environment (food). And so, just because the I-Language needs some environmental (social) input doesn’t mean that it is not internal, or innate.

I don't think so. The axioms and rules are part of the language. There are only 5 parts of a formal system: 1) the alphabet (or symbols). 2) The rules of formation, which determine which strings of symbols are valid and which aren't. 3) Axioms, or a list of the valid strings that we are allowed to start with. 4) The Rules of Construction, which determine how we can take an axiom (or theorem) and modify it to create a new (and valid) theorem. Some rules of construction, can also create new theorem without using a pre-existing axiom or theorem. 5) Theorems, or a list of all the strings that have been (or can be) created using the rules.

That's all there is to a formal system. There is no assignment of meaning, that's called an interpretation, and it is a veneer that is appled from outside of the formal language itself.... And even the Metalanguage is not (strictly speaking) a part of the formal language. It is a language that allows us to talk about the formal language.

This is my understanding... and given it, I don't see how it is possible to derive the same "formal language" from different axioms and rules of inference.

What I mean is this: given a syntax (your 1 and 2 above) S, we can have two different proof theories (your 3, 4, and 5) P1 and P2, which will both give us S. Let me prove this:

Syntax for S:

{A, B, C}
A is a valid string.
B is a valid string.
C is a valid string.
Nothing else is a valid string.

P1:
Axioms: {A, B, C}
RoI: None.

P2:
Axioms: {A, B, C}
RoI: If D, then E.

Both proof theories are compatible with S; the theorems generated by both proof theories will be the same in S; so both proof theories will generate the same syntax S. My point was this. Which proof theory is the true one for S? Well, the question of truth does not enter the picture. The only question that enters the picture is the question of compatibleness. This is the same for an E-Language. The question of truth does not enter the picture. Whereas it does for an I-Language, because the I-Language is a biological structure that can be studied meaningfully. We cannot study the E-Language meaningfully, as we cannot determine what is true or not.

One way to determine if a set of axioms and rules are right is if they accurately model whatever it is you're trying to model. If a formal system accurately models mathematics, then it is correct. Different formal languages can reasonably effective in modeling the same thing. Although Godel's Incompleteness Theorem essentially suggests that it is impossible for a formal system to be both consistent and complete.

The difference here is that the I-Language is a biological structure, for which there is a definitive answer.

This doesn't compute. Dictionary and grammar books are examples of guidelines for what is and isn't right in an E-language. On the other hand, my I-language is whatever I've developed it to be. I take one or more E-language, adopt those parts I like and reject those parts I do not... and that's the [non-conceptual part of my I-language].

This whole logical structure, and the terms that I use to [name] these ideas are an innate part of my I-language. But I can speak to other people, because I also understand how my I-language differs from the E-language. Thus, when I'm talking to other people, instead of communicating with myself, I have to take into account these logical "flaws" in the E-language.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Even earlier on you noted that the one could argue that the “E-language does not actually refer to anything.”

I don't think so. If that were the case, then it seems to me that natural language would never change. But it does change. The Romance languages are all from the same branch; they all evolved from the same origins... but over time each language went its own way. How does that happen if the E-language is independent from the I-language of many minds?

No, it happens BECAUSE there are many I-languages, each with the ability to adopt it's own variations of the E-language recipe. When enough people think the old E-language conventions are old and outdated and have developed the same I-language alternatives... then the E-language changes, and conforms to their I-language expectations. In a literal sense, then, 1 E-language = multiple I-languages.

As you know, I would argue that there is no E-Language, and that as things in nature change ever so slightly so does the I-Language. In fact, it is worth noting that the I-Language is subject to natural selection, as it is a part of nature. That accounts for some change. Other environmental factors can account for change.

Although, I am not sure if I have answered your question.

First, a child doesn't learn to walk by sitting down and memorizing something... and yet we still say that the child has learned to walk. So clearly, we don't have to learn in a typical, formal schooling type of setting. Second, you "picked up" this meaning because you were able to deduce it from the [context] of the sentence. So I would argue that context plays a vital role both in [learning] and in [deducing meaning after we've learned]…

Ok, context assists us in communicating. I agree with that.

…In addition, you yourself admitted that the dictionary pointed out what 'erstwhile" meant. It confirmed your intuitive understanding. If you had not looked it up, you would still have gotten that sense... and the next time you saw it used you could compare the sense of meaning that you got this next time with the sense that you got the first time... and each time you the meanings appeared to match up you would gain a greater certainty that your internal definition was the correct one…

And I would add, that if I never saw the word “erstwhile” again, I would take “erstwhile” to mean something like: previous, prior, old. I think an interesting question is: would I be right? What I mean is: when I use “erstwhile” as previous then am I correct, is my usage correct. My answer is that it is correct, for my I-Language. Although, for someone else’s I-Language it might not be. The convention of a dictionary is to help us communicate, I think, not to get the meaning right as it is already correct (for our I-Language).

…I on the other hand, looked at that sentence and thought that erstwhile probably meant something like "diligent, vigilant, persistent and adamant". This meaning is also not a totally inappropriate deduction... given the meaning of ernest, and the context of the sentence. So if neither of us looked up the actual definition, and we both learned instead by deducing the meaning from context... we would both learn (or develop) very different I-language meanings for this term. If enough people sided with me, the E-language would eventually change…

I don’t think the E-Language (external shared language) would change, as I don’t think there is any such thing. I think many I-Languages would change.

…For example, puruse means to read something carefully... but most people use this term in a way that means to just glance at something; or read it casually. So many people use this term inappropriately that it is now probably more likely to have the second intended meaning than the first. And in another few decades or so is is likely that the E-language will officially make this switch.

I don’t think they are using it incorrectly. If that is the meaning of the word in their I-Language, then they are using it correctly.

We just finished discussing how context plays a role in our language learning... and the same is true here. Suppose a child's father say, "It looks like the dog's leg is hurt." If the child knows all the words in this statement but [leg] and [hurt], he can intuitively get a sense of what the statement means by observing that the dog is limping. This is very similar to the way you deduced what "erstwhile" meant. The dog is limping... so he intuits that its leg is hurt. In his [conceptual language] the child understands the situation. Using other social clues, he understands that his father is referring to this same intuitive understanding that he has. So all that is necessary is to sort out the relationship between "leg" and "hurt". If the child doesn't understand at first, the father may gently take the dogs paw and say, "See its got a sliver in its paw."
From this--espeically when combined with other different situations which further reinforce our intuitions--we deduce that a "sliver" is a thing that can cause "hurt" and a "paw" is a thing at the end of a "leg" ... and so forth.

This only works if we already know the meaning of the other words in the sentence, and the role they play. If you know no Japanese, then no matter how much you look at the context of the sentence you will be lost (as you will have no idea how the words function together, and so on).

No there isn't a physical object that is an "and"... but we learn what "and" means by the way the term is used. Always, there are two objects or ideas. x and y. If the father says, "Go get x and y." And the child returns with only [x] the father will say, "You forgot to get y." And intuitively, it's pretty clear what "and" means.

This only works if the child knows what x and y means. Going back to the above point.

To be more precise, the E-language is the area of overlap that is shared my many I-languages. Despite the uniqueness of each I-language, we can communicate with others becasue we share enough similarities in our I-language that the differences usually do not cause problems... Often this is because we can deduce, from [social interaction] or [sentence context] what the person means, even though we might not have the same identical meaning in our personal I-language. So the collective understanding which is so shared is the E-language.

As for the studying aspect... When we studying numerous I-languages (in order to understand the E-language, what we are doing is to observe and take note of statistical similarities. We see how many people [think one way] and how many [think the other way]. Regardless of how we (the scientist) think, the E-language is the statistical norm that dominates over the whole culture. The only way to determine what that NORM actually is is to study a large number of individual I-languages.

OK, I understand what you mean now. So, if we want to find out how people are using a word at a given time, then we should study the overlap of the I-Languages—that is, the E-Language. OK, that’s fine, if you want to put it like that. But in studying language itself, in studying how people acquire language and language meaning, we need to study the I-Language.

For instance, if we wanted to study how we grow arms, we wouldn't study the statistical norm for arms. Instead, we would study the genes that cause the arm to grow, and the arm itself. Then we would abstract out to get a model or something for arm development. Likewise, we study the I-Language, abstract out and come up with "rules" and "parameters" or whatever to talk about language development. The “E-Language” will tell us nothing about language acquisition and meaning here.

Metaman wrote:

Antone wrote:

Metaman wrote: Speaking precisely, I don’t think we learn language. I think the proper way to describe what happens is that the language faculty grows.

I find this to be such a bizzarely irrational statement that I'm not sure how to address it without sounding insulting. lol.
If we don't "learn" langauage, then why not say that we don't learn MATH or PHILOSOPHY. Our brain simply grows to a more advance (or complicated) state... and the math is magically there.

If only this were true!

The reason is that maths and philosophy are not innate. Most likely, we have some kind of reasoning faculty, which we then use to do philosophy and maths. But maths and philosophy themselves have to be taught.

You have to remember that the I-Language is a biological module/organ. We don’t say that we learn to develop our arms; we say that our arms grow. We don’t say that we learn to develop eyes; we say that our eyes grow. The same is true of the I-Language. We don’t learn it—it is innate—and so it grows, like all other bodily organs.

Obviously, our I-Language needs social (environmental) input to get going. But this is true of all our bodily organs. For our eyes and arms to grow they need proteins, which we get from the environment (food). And so, just because the I-Language needs some environmental (social) input doesn’t mean that it is not internal, or innate.

Maths and philosophy and themselves special languages. I have forgotten the names for linguistic categories but I think that maths and philosophy are 'registers'. For instance the first concept that a small child learns is that of sameness. The concept is there, in the small child's brain but needs refining by social contacts usually in the early stages,through conversations with the parent. If you do conservation experiments(Piaget) with three four and five year old you can see how the learning process is developing from the basic concept of sameness.

The E-Language is “a pairing of sentences and meanings…where the language is ‘used by a population’ when certain regularities ‘in action or belief’ hold among the population with reference to the language.” And, “in a sense that the construct is understood independently of the properties of the mind/brain.”

the idea of an E-Language doesn’t make much sense

Yes I am willing to concede that an idea that doesn't make any sense and could not Possibly exist is one that does not make sense and isn't worth studying. As such, I will have to think up a new term for E-language, if I want to keep posting on this thread, because nothing I have said has anything to do with the "mind independent" E-language that Chomsky has defined. Maybe mE-language, for my E-language, lol.

A mountain is mind independent... But our efforts to [express that mountain] in any way, is mind dependant and DEMANDS social interaction. Your definition of an E-language disallows the first... and your definition of an I-language seems to disallow the second. If so, then it is an equally senseless and impossible idea, and also needs to be discarded, as far as I'm concerned.

I would probably define an I-language as that language that is private and internal to a given individual.
And and E-language is the set which is formed by overlapping all the I-languages and discarding those elements that are not held by the majority of the I-languages.

I think it characterises the debate in philosophy about internalist and externalist theories of meaning. As you probably know Kripke and Putnam are externalists; they believe that meaning is not in the head (or Putnam’s “meaning ain’t in the head,” or whatever it was). Chomsky, on the other hand, is an internalist.

I'm not very familiar with the terms internalist and externalist... but I would say that I'm a biernaist (yes, I just coined that term, lol) which is to say that I belive meaning is in both the internal AND the external. In many cases, meaning is a correspondence between that which is external and that which is internal. Again, it's a fusion of the two that makes things work.

The reason is that maths and philosophy are not innate. ... the I-Language is a biological module/organ. We don’t say that we learn to develop our arms; we say that our arms grow. We don’t say that we learn to develop eyes; we say that our eyes grow. The same is true of the I-Language. We don’t learn it—it is innate—and so it grows, like all other bodily organs.

I acknowledge that there are differnt types of learning. Learning my ABCs is not identical to learning to walk. Learning to be a sociopath (so you can beat a lie detector test) is not the same as learning that you've arrived late for work. Learning to talk is not the same thing as learning to think logically. Learning to play the piano is not the same as learning to recognize colors. And so forth... each type of learning is unique... and unique in each person, as well. But they are all types of learning.

Our arms grow, but we also must learn to use them. When I was young I learned to throw a baseball overhand, but as I got older I began to have shoulder troubles, so I practiced throwing (fastball) with an underhand delivery. At first I "threw like a girl" but eventually I learned to throw a fast ball with relative accuracy. Think about it. They wouldn't say "throw like a girl" if your arm JUST developed and did what it did because that's what developing arms do. NO! You learn to use your arm by using your arm--which is something that children do--but it is still learning.

What I mean is this: given a syntax (your 1 and 2 above) S, we can have two different proof theories (your 3, 4, and 5) P1 and P2, which will both give us S. Let me prove this:

Okay, I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

Which proof theory is the true one for S? Well, the question of truth does not enter the picture.

As I said, formal systems do not have meaning... and for something to be [true] it MUST have meaning. Theorems are either valid or invalid... and both theorems (in a case like that) are valid.

This is the same for an E-Language. The question of truth does not enter the picture. Whereas it does for an I-Language

mE-language assigns meaning, the same as mI-language does... and so we can study it meaningfully. I know what the mE-language means when I see "It is raining," And I can study the various social situations in which it is "True" to use that phrase. This is one aspect of studying the mE-language. I define truth as a correspondence between an individual's I-language and the physical reality individual is considering... so if an expression correspond possitively with regard to these two things then the expression is true.

So, for instance, "snow is white" is a true statement if we internally define the terms [snow] and [white] so that they match the physical objects that we are referring to when we use the terms "snow" and "white". Otherwise, the expression is false. No other consideration plays a role in determining if something is true or false--unless you're referring to [absolute truth] which is something that cannot be accurately expressed, and therefore can play little practical role in our assessment of truth.

I don’t understand what you are trying to say here. Even earlier on you noted that the one could argue that the “E-language does not actually refer to anything.

No, Chomsky's definition of an E-language does not refer to anything. My defintion (what I'm not trying to call an mE-language, but probably wont remember in subsequent posts) is a type of "thing" in the same way that [apple]--as opposed to [an apple] or [the apple]--is a type of thing. That is, [one physical apple] is not the same as [another physical apple]... but they are all examples of the singular and invariable (although vague) concept apple. The mE-language is like the concept [apple]. It is not a single instance of an mI-language... but all mI-languages (collectively) are instances of the mE-language. (I'm using instance here in the sense of meaning an element of a set.)

as things in nature change ever so slightly so does the I-Language. In fact, it is worth noting that the I-Language is subject to natural selection, as it is a part of nature.

How does this mysterious transformation magically take place? What you are suggesting is equivalent to saying that [natural selection] takes place inherently/spontaneously without any external environmental pressures. Analogously, mE-language activity can be seen as the external pressure that creates change in the mI-language.

... if I never saw the word “erstwhile” again, I would take “erstwhile” to mean something like: previous, prior, old. ... would I be right? ... My answer is that it is correct, for my I-Language. Although, for someone else’s I-Language it might not be. The convention of a dictionary is to help us communicate, I think, not to get the meaning right as it is already correct (for our I-Language).

Interesting point. And I mostly agree.

I'll take my side, since it leads to a more pertinent argument.... I thought "erstwhile" basically meant ernest. And as long as I define it that way, then within the perspective of my own personal mI-language, that definition is "correct" ... it has to be because that's the way I've defined it. It is not correct, according to the mE-language. Or according to the majority of other mI-languages. So when I encounter the word again, I am likely to see that my mI-language is not in unison with the mE-language (as observed by other social encounters), and so I will proably change my mI-language definition. This is the envivronmental pressure that causes the evolutionary change that I mentioned in the evolution analogy.

I don’t think they are using it incorrectly. If that is the meaning of the word in their I-Language, then they are using it correctly.

All I have to say to that is, "Zergum yullous dumbisus tiquat." And by your own logic, you cannot possibly deny it... Because I know what I mean, I defined it, and you have stated that I am right. lol.

Let's put aside the obvious (which is this argument is absurd) and stick to the fact that this does not make for a valid topic of study. You can't make any assertions about the topic of study, because as soon as you do you have gone outside of the topic of study. And yet somehow this unstudiable subject is the only language subject worth studying?

This only works if we already know the meaning of the other words in the sentence, and the role they play. If you know no Japanese, then no matter how much you look at the context of the sentence you will be lost (as you will have no idea how the words function together, and so on).

It will be harder to pick up the appropriate meanings... just as it is for an infant learning to speak. Why do you think it takes them so many months to figure out how to say "mama". Once they've figured out the idea that [words] can be associated with [physical objects] however, they start learning words relatively fast. And the more words they learn the faster the learning process tends to go becasue they know more words and so can use them to make sense of the other words they do not yet know. This increase in learning rate continues until they've leaned all the common words, then the learning gradually slows... as only the more and more rarely used words are left to learn.

This only works if the child knows what x and y means. Going back to the above point.

Not necessarily. Suppose the chile knows the words "mama" and "get" and the father says, "Go to mama and get x and y." The child will toddle over to mama who will hand the child [x] and [y]. If the child starts to leave before being given [y] the "moma" will say, "Hold up you forgot y," and then give them [y]. In this way, the child not only learn what [and] is but they learn to distinguish between [x] and [y].

in studying language itself, in studying how people acquire language and language meaning, we need to study the I-Language.

I'm not saying we shouldn't study the mI-language, only that it isn't the only topic with meaning or that is worthy of study.

Not necessarily. Suppose the chile knows the words "mama" and "get" and the father says, "Go to mama and get x and y." The child will toddle over to mama who will hand the child [x] and [y]. If the child starts to leave before being given [y] the "moma" will say, "Hold up you forgot y," and then give them [y]. In this way, the child not only learn what [and] is but they learn to distinguish between [x] and [y].

It's like when I said to my dog " take your bone into the kitchen" the dog did so not because he understood syntax or had a large vocabulary but because he understood that some immediate action was required of him, and he understood "bone" . This was sufficient for him to do what came naturally and transport his bone somewhere else.The social and psychological circumstances of the child are all important to his learning of language so that the gaps in the child's knowledge are filled with happy experiences and the signifiers that accompany them.