Psycholinguistics.

Superhero Sam said:

Why dont we say the hi priest instead of high priest?

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I think of how language can be meant partly to be aesthetic, and not all set and plain rules stuff . . . but more or less artistic, too. Also, in order to really become natural with a language, we need to learn each word, by itself, for how we can use it and say it automatically without needing to slow down to analyze rules and patterns.

And, like I kind of indicated, certain words with different sounds with the same spellings could be because of words coming from different languages sources. And this can be good, too, to have a language which is not isolated to its own self and a certain group of people. Because we humans can become inbred with our own kind, in different ways

Because with loving and sharing we gain more and more resources even better than our own >

"For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?" (in Matthew 5:46)

So, it is good to be able to share with different people . . . but in God's love - - not only so we can use people!!

Also, if you learn other languages, you discover how they can have different approaches to expressing ideas and conjugating verbs and what expressions they use.

Also, there can be different levels of communication, if I understand right. For example, Korean has something like fourteen levels, including maybe familiar and friendship and formal and professional, or something like this. And I understand there are spoken signals which they use in conversation in order to indicate which level they are talking in; they do not only use difference in tone of voice and difference in acceptable subject matter like I think we do, in English.

Don't waste your time with Psycholinguistics. Those people are at least 30 years behind. Basically all the currently fashionable theories in Psycholinguistics were realized by B. F. Skinner in the 1930's and formally published by him in 1957. The functionalism of language, its contextual nature, grammatical frames built out of "usage", task-based teaching, etc. All of it was there in 1957, but the field completely ignored Skinner because they thought he was just saying the same thing as all the other behaviorists when he was saying something completely new.

The important thing to realize in all of this is that language is not a "code." Language is just things that we say in certain social contexts to get a reaction from someone else.

Here's how we're pretty sure it happens with your native language. At first, children only have what we call an echoic repertoire. This is where the child repeats verbal utterances and receives some kind of reinforcement for it. (And reinforcement can be subtle; it doesn't have to be as obvious as Skinner made it in some of his examples). That builds up a phonetic skillset. Then the child slowly applies those repeated words to other functional contexts--mands and tacts (or, to speak in layman's terms, requests and descriptions; though that is an oversimplification). The child says "milk" and an adult fetches milk: reinforcement. The child points and says "duck" and an adult smiles and says, "You're right; it is a duck." These single words are adequate at first, but as the child grows, he also learns that he can modify words to express more nuance about what he wants or about what he's saying to try to impress someone. Thus, he learns another function: the autoclitic. Autoclitics are words and word orders that clarify the meaning of the request or description. At the the core of every sentence, you have a verb or a noun, and pretty much everything else in the sentence is just an elaboration on what's important or interesting about that verb or noun--autoclitics. And finally, there's also listener behavior going on throughout all of this--learning to act in response to what other people say--which sort of reverbs back into speaking. You hear words in certain contexts, and then you repeat them in that same context and learn that it gets a response from adults.

So for a blind person, it works basically the same way, except that when they get to the tact phase, they start saying words to describe not the things they see, but the things they hear and feel and smell. How does that start? Well, people are saying words to them when they have to those experience. They are likely to repeat those words when they have that experience again, at which point they learn that it gets a reaction from other people. That can be reinforcing. And slowly but surely, blind kids also learn to modify those single-word requests and descriptions with autoclitics. "I want milk" clarifies that I'm not just saying there's some interesting milk in the room that maybe you'd like to look at or taste, but that I personally feel deprived of milk and would be overjoyed if you would fetch it for me.

But that's not to say we don't often confuse language and the things we use it for. If I were to say "milk" and describe for you its creamy texture and cold temperature and how good it tastes with cookies, you can easily feel or taste those experiences because at some time in your past, someone said "milk" to you, and that signaled to you an occasion in which to find those experiences. But try this experiment with yourself: (1) Get a kitchen timer and set it to 30 seconds. (2) For 30 seconds straight, just say "milk" over and over and over again. (3) Reassess. Does the word feel different to you?

If you're like most people, saying the word over and over again heightens your awareness that the word is just a sound, and a pretty silly one at that. It doesn't have to signal the thing that you usually associate it with. It's just that our culture silently agrees to use those sounds so that we can all understand each other, and we get so used to connecting those sounds with the experiences instead of others that it seems absurd to us when we encounter another language.

Superhero Sam said:

Can you please elaborate

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Well, I do not know Inuit; so I can't elaborate as a person who knows it. I'll offer my guess >

I suppose "crazy" can mean that the grammar does not have set principles. This might mean you need to learn the meaning of each phrase or sentence, without being able to use principles to help you understand it. So, if this were the case, then a phrase or whole sentence could have its meaning, autonomously. And a little baby growing up with the language would not be concerned about learning principles in order to understand a statement, but the child would simply learn the meaning of the statement.

Also, for all I know, Inuit simple seems crazy in comparison with other languages. But other languages could seem crazy to an Inuit and some number of people of other languages.

Superhero Sam said:

Were you implying Inuit was simpler?

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no



In an English present tense writing, you can miss the mood. So, I suppose the 63 forms of present indicative might include different forms which indicate one's attitude and mood.

So, it might not be simpler, but clearer as to one's meaning.

Superhero Sam said:

formal writing and having an aristocratic level of communication
subject matter reference?

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If you mean, do I have sources for what I am considering? no. I am just considering from my experience of languages, which has been mainly experimental.

Superhero Sam said:

In my previous comment I was asking if are you referring to the subject matter in Inuit being simple different

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I am thinking that maybe different Inuit forms of a verb, not the subject matter, can express different moods or attitudes who is saying what is being done.