File spoon-archives/marxism2.archive/marxism2_1996/96-07-10.220, message 105


Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:35:14 +0300 (EET DST)
From: J Laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: language


Barkley wrote:

>      Hmmm, well it depends on what we allow ourselves to call
> a "language."  Mathematics has often been labeled a "metalanguage"
> and symbolic logic has in turn involved discussions labeled
> "metamathematics."

I think it's quite common nowadays think of 'language' as
'sign system': we have a set of signs (for example; words)
and set of rules (grammar in a case of words) which tell us
how combine signs. So we have several languages - including
'natural' ones (English, Swahili, Hindi etc), mathematics,
pictorial and 'acoustic' (music) systems, logic etc. all the
way to computer languages.

Funny thing is that 'natural' language is always needed in
order to learn those other ones. After learning it we
usually, or so it seems, forget the learning process and
sometimes even believe that our access to some particular
language is due to some mystical mercy (we 'understand'
music because of inherited 'taste', for example).

Perhaps someone more intimate with semiotics and linguistics
could tell us more?

Jukka



     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005