Fnord

I followed an interesting survey which predictably became a heated derisionfest.

The survey was a thread with the following question:

Which is the correct saying?
You've got another think coming!
or
You've got another thing coming!

My first thought was that I have never seen the "think" version until that point, last night. Of course the impulse is "that can't be right." But, I've been into phrase and word origins long enough that I decided to go with neutrality and read through the discussion.

Two separate people posted this OED entry:
think, n. 2b to have another think coming: to be greatly mistaken.
1937 Amer. Speech XII. 317/1 Several different statements used for the same idea - that of some one's making a mistake...[e.g.] you have another think coming.

I found this link:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html

In the end I found that the version I'd never heard, with "think," was the original form. It has proponents to be found online that complain of those using "thing." Neither is ultimately "correct" to a linguist. Usage across all speakers includes acceptance of both forms, so both are acceptable. These sorts of things crop up often in any dialect of any language. Taking sides doesn't really help as language is to be mished and mashed to meet the will of any people using it to communicate.

"The term 'protologism' is considered a neologism."

Taken from this page when looking up words that mean "word maker."
Both of those fancy terms above work, although there is one caveat which the quote above gives. Watch out for it!

Oh and, neologisms typically already have some wide acceptance, much like neologism and protologisms don't yet, much like protologism. Confused yet?

Food for Thought

The final word on nutrition and health, combining the
results of many independent health studies:

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart
   attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or
   Americans.


2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart
   attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or
   Americans.


3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer
   heart attacks than the Canadians, British, Australians or
   Americans.


4. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and
   suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians, British,
   Australians or Americans.


5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat lots of sausages
   and fats, and suffer fewer heart attacks than the Canadians,
   British, Australians or Americans.


6. The Ukrainians drink a lot of vodka, eat a lot of perogies
   and cabbage rolls and suffer fewer heart attacks than the
   Canadians, British, Australians or Americans.


7. Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is
   apparently what kills you.

---

I posted this because I liked how thorough it was and I've thought of this very thing before.

( Linguistics Test Scorez )

Okay so this is a thought trail on a quote in Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter. It wasn't even a main point but it got me thinking about the implications of what it actually means.

"We use the word "all" in a few ways which are defined by the thought processes of reasoning. That is, there are rules which of all obeys. We may be unconscious of them, and tend to claim we operate on the basis of the meaning of the word; but that, after all, is only a circumlocution for saying that we are guided by rules which we never make explicit. We have used words all our lives in certain patterns, and instead of calling the patterns "rules", we attribute the courses of our thought processes to the "meanings" of words."

I added the bolding to show which sentence carried the gist of what I'm responding to.

Basically a lot of outdated "linguistic" writings--often written before the idea of the study of linguistics or before it took on its present form--worked from the perspective of meaning being very inherent. They often assumed a single ur-language (original) that everything derived from and that the study of philology (an old term and concept of what linguistics is), or historical linguistics, would eventually lead us to the roots or etymologies (perfect forms) of words.

Now in a given language words have personalities, they feel different from each other to the point that no two "synonyms" have the same feel in a given use. The possibilities of usage of these different words even varies so that there is no simple, direct overlap. Any "perfect synonyms" could be argued against successfully by another person. However, between different languages words vary heavily, down to the sounds available to make them, they way they can be built, and they way they can be positioned together.

We are all working with very complicated rule sets for words, applied arbitrarily in the sense that "cat" could mean televisions and a verb for walking. There's no inherent meaning to words. We try to argue that "that isn't what that means" but they're just rules which the users form and remember. The rules can and do change constantly.


Now this relates back to something which interests me heavily. Does language affect the way we think? If so, how?
I feel the answer to the first question is yes. I will spend however long it takes to progress from "feeling" to being sure one way or the other. Now, if meanings are really just sets of rules that would imply that every human is working with the same tools and thus, there are no differences between the way an English speaker and say a German or Mandarin speaker thinks. Well, now we are also dealing with a metalinguistic problem--what does think mean? It's an awfully broad term. The primary entry at dictionary.com posits 27 entries, with 6 of them being phrasals of which "think" is the root but I would count this because they could be implied without the rest of the phrase in certain contexts.

I would say that one way that "think" fits here is in the sense of "perceive and process." If my language has no present or future tense, nor even phrases to refer to them, I will not be perceiving my experiences in that 3-chamber way. Time will be a continuous flow and I will simply see myself in a manifested point, without even necessarily presuming that reality could not be equally manifest at every other point in this endless flow. I will know that some experiences in this flow are now in my memory of experiences and some have not come to pass although I can imagine them clearly and vividly and they may come to pass. So, because I am not perceiving things in the same way, I will not be able to process them in the same way. A very different way of "thinking" would have to be used here.

Now if my language doesn't have a word for the pleasure one derives from pain, either to one's self or others, I will have to either continue to use the phrase "pleasure derived from pain" or try to make a word. I can coin a word, such as "painjoy" or borrow one, such as "Schadenfreude" from German. Were English speakers unable to "think" of this concept before these two new words? Clearly not, the phrase got the point across well enough to pass the idea on from speaker to listener. But, perhaps many English speakers didn't and don't think of the concept very concretely because they don't know of a simple word and don't hear it talked about. So they won't be making statements about it unless they become exposed to it through some out-of-the-day-to-day means. So while this is less significant than the idea in the previous paragraph, it is still an example.

So, now to tie this back to the idea of "meaning" actually being "rules" applied to words. If we remove this illusory layer of "meanings" being at all inherent, we just have "rules" for structuring clusters of sounds. The rules we have are unique. How unique? Unique to types of languages, individual languages, dialects, people who have close relationships, individuals, and contexts for the individual to be in. Don't take it for granted that you can't confirm the dictionary, or as it would be called in this case, a lexicon in another person's head is the same as yours. You really can't, there simply wouldn't be time to dig deep enough on every word. The sounds can even vary. Have you, dear American, ever felt that it sounded like Irish people are always asking questions with their statements? Well, they think of their tone differently, and even the sounds to use to express the same language you speak.

Are we all able to have the same spectrum of experiences? Well, presumably. I don't know that this could be proven and if you give me a while I might be able to disprove it. For the moment, let's say that even if we can, that's not true in a given moment. There is something I haven't learned that would make me capable of having a particular experience, and the same is for you. Now, if we can't all end up capable of the same whole spectrum, then this is very complicated to even try to write about. Let's assume we can.

Now I am still trying to get the full perspective on this issue as so many points have been argued but...it seems that the idea I stated in the previous paragraph, that we seem to all be capable of the same experiences is the one that is used by many linguists who are presently arguing that language has no effect on thinking. This also seems to be something disassumed by older-school linguists who said that language completely controls the way we think. I think that these are both extremist views and that neither are true. I think it is somewhere in the middle and that thought affects language and language affects thought in a continuous flow.

But even aside from the experience idea, the rules, the meanings we apply do vary. We know that. Does the man with no past and future tense perceive the event in the same way as the one who has them? No, clearly not. Is the experience he took away in his mind the same? Well, no we know that everyone has a unique experience. Does that mean that what made it different for him was exclusively something or some things outside of language?

More Later.

Note that I haven't reread this yet. It may not flow well. I will stamp this at 1.0. If you care to, check back for upgrades. :P