From: djbpitt@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Written and Spoken Language(s)
Date: 15 Apr 92 14:11:25 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

In article <1992Apr14.174945.8149@spss.com> markrose@spss.com 
(Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

>The immediate
>context of the remarks you so objected to was Herman Rubin's question
>"whether the emphasis on the primacy of the spoken languge is appropriate."
>To me this is precisely a question of what is the prototypical example
>of language use.
>
> [various omissions]
>
>Linguists should explain everything about language, spoken and written
>(and signed).  If written language is made primary, then I think 
>huge and important aspects of language don't get addressed.

I think I was the original author of the remarks attributed to Herman
Rubin above, but it is becoming clear that my statement was ambiguous
(perhaps because it was in written form and lacked the disambiguation
that intonation might have provided :-)).

What I meant was that for _certain_ linguistic behavior, at least syn-
chronically (and, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, perhaps also
diachronically), writing is primary.  But my doubting "the primacy
of the spoken language" was not intended to suggest that "written
language [should be considered] primary" on a global or prototypical
scale.  I agree completely that _most_ written language is best
viewed as a secondary representation of spoken language.  But I have
also provided some evidence that _certain_ written languages are
primarily written, i.e., that they are not merely written representa-
tions of speech. 

I think Mark has been arguing that written language is _usually_
secondary to spoken language from both synchronic and diachronic
perspectives.  I have been arguing that written language is _not
always_ secondary to spoken language.  These statements are not
contradictory and the misunderstanding seems to have arisen from
my failure to emphasize the "not always" sufficiently and Mark's
corresponding failure to emphasize the "usually".

>>The atypical is not automatically irrelevant and ornithologists do study
>>penguins.
>
>To put it in these terms, ornithologists should certainly study penguins,
>but should not base a theory of birds primarily on penguins.
>
>And penguinologists (spheniscologists?) need to know that their subjects
>evolved from birds that flew.

To continue this analogy in light of the preceding, ornithologists make
a major error in basing a theory of birds primarily on penguins, but
they make a minor (but unmistakable) error if they totally exclude
penguins from a theory of birds.  And while spheniscologists (hey,
why not?) certainly need to know that penguins had flying ancestors,
they also need to consider penguin development that occurred after
the first protopenguin flapped his wings and fell on his beak.

--David
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