Re: virus: Sign memes & Chomsky

Corey A. Cook (COOKCORE@esuvm.emporia.edu)
Wed, 16 Apr 97 15:09:52 CT

I wrote:
>The reason that all languages share a high order grammer is
>1) All cultures are linked, somehow.
>2) All languages attempt to describe the same Universe.
>3) All languages (so far) have been constructed by brains
> which were constructed by the same basic pattern.
Tony replied:
> If all cultures are linked and that link is the cause of the
>similarities in grammar then there is no interesting findings to
>explain, this may be the case. But if we have seen studies on genuinely
>linguistically isolated environments then the fact that they share a
>common high level grammar needs explaining.
> Languages with very different gramar could say the same things
>about the same universe so I think your point 2 is not very persuasive.
> Point 3 is where we are in agreement. All this is interesting
>and it makes me look foreward to reading one of the books Ive ordered.

I think that what it comes down to is that, in a round about
way, I am trying to say that a number of reasons contribute to
the similarity of high order grammer in all languages. Also, the
reason that I am not willing to accept "linguistically isolated
environments" is that they don't seem to be possibile. How could
they exist? Unless we are talking about a seperatly evolved species,
there _must_ be some link back to the rest of the world. Nobody
might know what that link is, or when it happened, but they must
have come from somewhere.

Corey A. Cook
cookcore@esuvm.emporia.edu

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