Category Archives: psycholinguistics

The role of feedback in natural language

Posted on by

Artificial intelligence has patterned after human structures for years. In consequence, artificial parsing has come to be used for teaching and diagnosis. Computers rely on programs. The thesis discusses human information processing, with focus to the role of feedback in language. Human information processing differs from artificial considerably.

  • Tests by Ladefoged showed speech and language dependence on feedback without exception.
  • Human DNA requires cellular feedback for active protein.
  • Human endurance under feedback impoverishment has been proved lower than for fasting.

Not only on these grounds, the role of feedback in human language processing can be posited to approximate a drive.

 

I defended the thesis in 2000, at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, earning my M.A. degree in American English, specialization psycholinguistics.

 

 

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

 

Of the many definitions of feedback, those of output return, effect reversal, or acoustic interference have been widely used, with regard to mechanical devices. Psychological meaning to be that of evaluative behavior, feedback has become associated with guidance or viewpoints.[1] Neurology began applying the term of information processing to human bodily structures in the XX century.

 

The notion of feedback has been adapted for cybernetics,[2] the Greek kybernan to denote steering or governing. Artificial intelligence remains a secondary application, capable of patterning after human insight only to an extent. Hodgkin-Huxley mathematical model having lost prominence for life sciences, the cellular processes as discovered by the researchers remain a fact, feedback to be a closed-loop capability over open-loop sequences

 

Psycholinguistics gained prominence in 1960s, opposing behaviorism (Puppel, 1996). The framework for the present quest, the discipline has been defined as a study of the relationships between linguistic behavior and psychological processes, including language acquisition (New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998). Encyklopedia Językoznawstwa Ogólnego would enclose language teaching and remedial with the field (1993). The study of psychological reality of language, as recognized also by the Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1989), does not abstract from language neural matter.

 

Human nervous systems can be viewed as natural information management structures. The tenets of option, information pool, program, feedback, and signal use are met within the human internal structuring by standard. Natural language is indispensable for human logical functioning, comprehension and production to depend on neural processes. Feedback reliance is a natural principle for live human systems.

 

Feedback phenomena are intrinsic to single neurons as well as systemic dynamics, of the central and autonomic co-operating for situational and individual stereotypy, or the cortical and subcortical negotiation for the spoken or written act. Regard to feedback is not to encourage pursuits for a uniform[3] neural model for language, human speech and language to be a natural faculty by a human person.

 

Individual, personality factors emerge already at the level of language cerebral patterns.[4] The patterns and their networks are not innate or inborn structures, but actual neural connections every person needs to form on his or her own. Consequently, there is no universal neural format for language, and no such model can become of function for personal linguistic strategies.

 

Strategy language styling and structuring depends on personal free will. The generative and spontaneous capability uses open-loop consecutions for language that can compare with programs, yet need to be formed in feedback-mediated exercise of goal-oriented behavior. The laws of learning by Edward Lee Thorndike are consistent with natural neural networking, in which personal congruity is an inherent component.

 

Human earliest vocal behavior is innate. As instinctively, humans begin own inner networking, in the egocentric feedback of circular reactions. Throughout lifespan, an essentially closed-loop manner can be observed about human learning.[5] Human persons to be dynamic entities rather than layers or scopes of actuation, cognitive processes would require use of own inner input.[6] Timing would be indispensably intrinsic for all intellectual performance, human working memory to partake in inner feedback. Stimulation, as a unidirectional influence, would be incapable of feedback functions.[7]

 

Behaviorist approaches can be doubted also on grounds of the inner heterarchy carry-over of endophasia. For human language skill overall, feedback as sustained in neural pattern build would allow verification as well as change in language existent neural compass, and provide for the neuro-motor-articulatory feedforward. All natural languages permanence is relative, to include phonology along syntax and semantics, in the notion of a language standard.

 

“Mind modularity”, “language universals”, or “notional matrices” cannot account for the language pool phenomena of the Warrens experiment. It would be feedback-mediated attainment of language information thresholds to explain the results: the masked component concealed actual phonemes. Not only on these grounds, feedback reliance can be considered a neuro-behavioral priority for natural language. Open-loop sequences or routines would be formed to encourage neural economy and thus make more allowance for feedback and related responsiveness, as proved by Ladefoged. Grammars would be projects by individual minds flexibly to apply within personal linguistic strategies.

 

Feedback intrinsicality becomes a sound conclusion with regard to permanent hindrance, as well. Re-orienting would follow natural feedback compensation, in persons of inborn and acquired sensory impediment. Remedial in mental language processing always solicits personal awareness and language egocentric feedback. Behavior validity may never become negotiated in the learning deficient, without autonomous concordance. The extreme of the “fragmented thought” of schizophrenia implies defects in intrinsic timing to express in phonologically driven discourse.

 

These are not only human cognition and language to need natural inner feedback. Human DNA depends on cellular feedback for active protein, in the course of the human endeavor to comprehend own structure, this being already Lamarck to note on organism adaptation (The New Oxford Dictionary of English, 1998). Human endurance under feedback impoverishment has been reported lower than for fasting, and of sensory expression (Lindsay and Norman, 1991).[8] Parallel-distributed information processing by human brains holds in standard as well as non-standard contexts, yet impediment, obstruction, or deficit cannot prescribe on norm.[9] Therefore, the role of feedback in language processing can be posited to approximate a drive.

 

Psychologically, a drive is an inner urge to stimulate response, incite or repress action, as well as a basic and instinctive need (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 1989). The instinctual nature of feedback reliance would be strongest in neural, inner extents, interference or limitation potentially to induce biological search for variables. In environmental scopes, dependence on feedback would lessen with language maturation and personal independence.[10]

 

Not connoted with stress or fear in civilized circumstances, speech and language always remain a basic human need, and as such relate to self-sustainment. The role of natural feedback in language thus would be that of an initiating, mediating, and modeling factor. This would be the self-preservation instinct to promote individual flexibility and competence for progress and advancement.

 

FOOTNOTES

 

[1] The phrase to give someone feedback means to provide an opinion, an informed view. Only solicited opinion in standard verbal form may work as feedback.

 

[2] Cybernetics: theory of control in biology, mechanics, and electronics.

 

[3] The degree of uniformity as in medical sciences, where the doctor tells the standard heart rate or respiratory capacity, would not apply for language. Some people speak volumes, some prefer written language activity, and some hardly get involved with language. There is no ground to term any of the predilections abnormal.

 

[4] Already individual ways to shape letters of the alphabet vary. The neural patterns to mediate handwritten (ɑ) or (e) can differ from those to mediate (a) or (ε). Please compare chapter 3.6 for graphemic variance.

 

[5] Please compare chapter 2.8.

 

[6] Please compare chapter 2.4, on the role of circular reactions.

 

[7] Even low-level verbal stimulation could not provide for inner language.

 

[8] Please refer to chapter 1.8 and the pool model for internal balance preservation. With partial deprivation only, the endurance was about 48 hours (Lindsay and Norman, 1991).

 

[9] An approach to have deprivation for a measure would have us developing innumerable “drives”. Naturally, a figure of speech as a drive for knowledge could sound natural. “A drive for a good cup of coffee” would not, unless humorous.

 

[10] The term competence follows Noam Chomsky’s notion that all humans have language competence and performance. The use is not to imply school assessment.

The conscious mind of Emily Dickinson

Posted on by

… Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear,

Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence — …

(Emily Dickinson, Safe in their alabaster chambers, Wikipedia)

 

When we look at poetry by Emily Dickinson today, we get strange big letters and a multitude of dashes which yet cannot give the special Bees, Birds, or Ears any real sense. To blame the reader

— “you know, the author was a mystic, metaphysical, only high minds get it” —

a Mystical Bee remains unappealing on a High Mind as well.

 

We can read commentary online.

 

… Dickinson’s idiosyncratic poetic practice—her pervasive use, for example, of dashes, and of unexpectedly capitalized words …

 

Students may have problems with the appearance of the poems–with the fact that they are without titles; that they are often short and compact, compressed; that the dash is so often used in the place of traditional punctuation.

 

 

Emily Dickinson’s poetry was a success with the people of her times. The people did not have problems, and they knew proper spelling. Emily Dickinson also was aware of orthography as in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, and she certainly did not mean her poetry for just a joke, though she had a sense of humor and I hope to prove it.

 

Let us have a close look at a manuscript for the poem we began with, Safe in their alabaster chambers. The color red is not to correct. I like Emily Dickinson’s poetry really much and I would not alter it. The color is to emphasize dash height relative to letter.

Safe in their alabaster chambers, click to enlarge

I do believe this is an autograph.

 

The manuscript has “low dashes”. The markings belong well with the habit of the hand. This habit also has an open e that closes for sibilant clusters, for example. We can compare diadems, Doges, and soundless. Spoken language mattered in Emily Dickinson’s notation.

 

The habit of the hand was strong. We can see the “low dash” around the name of the addressee, Suz.

 

Why make such marks, when writing a poem? Let us think about language and inspiration. There is an occurrence in Emily Dickinson’s verse to correspond with Latin and Greek. The occurrence is beyond mere coincidence or unaware habit.

 

(Time and Eternity, XVIII, Playmates) Latin: collusor, companion at play; condiscipulus, school-mate; angelus, a messenger, an angel; lapillus, small stone, pebble (marble?); lusus, a game;  Greek: ὁμηλυσία, omelusia, companionship.

 

God permits industrious angels

Afternoons to play.

I met one, — forgot my school-mates,

All, for him, straightway.

 

God calls home the angels promptly

At the setting sun;

I missed mine. How dreary marbles,

After playing Crown!

 

The inspiration is morpho-phonemic and humorous. Let us try a few more pieces. (Life, XXIII, Unreturning) ἀνάπλυσις, anaplusis, washing or rinsing out; ἀνήλυσις, anelusis, going up, return; ἤλυσις, elusis, step, gait; lenunculus, a small sailing-vessel, bark, skiff (the toddling little boat).

 

‘T was such a little, little boat

That toddled down the bay!

‘T was such a gallant, gallant sea

That beckoned it away!

 

‘T was such a greedy, greedy wave

That licked it from the coast;

Nor ever guessed the stately sails

My little craft was lost!

 

We can compare the Greek -upo/ypo- for I asked no other thing (Life, XII, p. 213): ἰσότυπος, isotypos, shaped alike, συνυπόπτωσις, synypoptosis, simultaneous presentation to the senses; Latin cauponarius, a male shopkeeper, tradesman, ὑποπτερνίς, upopternis, a knob (a kind of a button that can twirl, in the modern use), and ὑπo, below, looking a picture up and down (as Brazil on a map).

 

I asked no other thing,

No other was denied.

I offered Being for it;

The mighty merchant smiled.

 

Brazil? He twirled a button,

Without a glance my way:

“But, madam, is there nothing else

That we can show to-day?”

 

Emily Dickinson marked her poetry for prosody as well as language morphology. The markings and big letters belong with drafts of her pieces, not the final forms. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd knew the draft features and ignored them with print. We do not follow Thomas Jefferson’s “rough draught” for the Declaration of Independence, either.

 

Why I stay by Emily Dickinson’s first print

I like Emily Dickinson’s poetry very much, but this does not extend to many interpretations. I think they exaggerate on the influence by the poet’s recluse lifestyle. To compare comprehension, or just out of curiosity, would you try to find the pieces by Emily Dickinson to tell about book dusting, or the ex libris? You may be interested in the Uncouth love theme (the “suspicious” love of language) in her poetry. You may like the thematic stanza, too.

 

I had no time to hate

 

Surrender

 

I died for beauty

 

Mine!

 

The wind

 

In a library

 

First series afterword

No men, women, children, or houses with the pie

Posted on by

 

William Jones was a reported hyperpolyglot. He learned Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and basic Chinese, says Wikipedia to add he knew thirteen languages thoroughly, and another twenty-eight reasonably well.

William Jones


Mr. Jones wrote The Sanscrit Language to tell that Greek and Latin had a common root, Sanskrit. This Proto-Indo-European “language”, PIE in short, was to originate contemporary European tongues.


Altogether, Mr. Jones remains described as having had at least reasonably good knowledge of 41 tongues. Such a reasonably good acquaintance should have encompassed the words woman, man, child, and house. Let us compare these words in Latin, Greek, English, Russian, Polish, German, French, and Sanskrit.

 
Is there a root PIE vocabulary?

 

WOMAN

Woman silhouette

Latin: femina; Greek: gyne; English: woman; Russian: zenshchina; Polish: kobieta; German: Weib; French: femme; Sanskrit: nari.

MAN

Man silhouette

Latin: vir; Greek: andros; English: man; Russian: muzshtschina; Polish: mężczyzna; German: Mann; French: homme; Sanskrit: naro.

I do not know Sanskrit. I can only compare resources. The morpheme –man, as quoted by supporters of the PIE, yet seems to refer to thinking, not sex, whereas it is common lore that masculinity is not strictly synonymous with pensiveness.😉

 

CHILD

Child silhouette

Latin: putillus; Greek: pais; English: child; Russian: rebionok; Polish: dziecko; German: Kind; French: enfant; Sanskrit: sutah.

Words for children would have varied in Sanskrit. The culture has been publicized as rigidly stratified, in status and ancestry. “Children of men” made another name, napraja. The notion is unlikely to have regarded speciate or sexual differentiation.

HOUSE

House silhouette

Latin: domus; Greek: do; English: house; Russian: dom; Polish: dom; German: Haus; French: maison; Sanskrit: vasati.

Vir or andros, child or rebionok, woman or kobieta ― the words do not resemble one another, and they are the basic vocabulary. In all languages, these are the words hardly ever to change. Polish and Russian could make a group. We may compare the words muzshtschina and mężczyzna. There is not much point deriving Polish from Russian or Russian from Polish, however. We can compare rebionok and dziecko.

 
Domus, do, and dom, or house and Haus, show geographic affinity. The similarities in form are characteristic of urban or other developments and do not decide on language grouping.


Language groups or families


Language groups work better than language families. “Families” derive languages, one from another. This might not work, as in the Polish and Russian examples above. Proto-languages are mostly constructs: there is no written evidence for them.


Why derive European vocabularies from Sanskrit, while Sanskrit might have absorbed loan words?


There is no evidence for the Proto-Indo-European. The Rosetta Stone was absolutely unique for Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Demotic, and Ancient Greek. It yet allowed translation, not an etymological study. There never was anything even like the Rosetta Stone, for Indo-European languages, and Marco Polo was probably not the first visitor to the Far East. 

 

Carbon dating


Whenever possible, written resources should be carbon-dated. There is no philological method to affirm the original beyond evidence. Writings were copied in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and later, hand style and pen craft.


Radiocarbon results happen to be misunderstood. A website shares a story about a find from 9.5 thousands of years ago. It is … a piece of wood from an underwater site, without written matter. However, palynology is less likely to work for written resources.


Oldest does not mean wisest

 

People speak languages mostly as they are, without looking up to “parent languages”. Within evolutionary approaches, languages may have emerged independently, owing to human cognitive advancement. Much language knowledge has become shared by and among humans. However, supporters of the Proto-Indo-European “family” have gone into making out religion, too.

Trundholm

 

I do not share in the enthusiasm about deriving language roots. People were not more sophisticated in ancient times. And there is not a PIE root for the name “Earth”.

EARTH

Earth silhouette

Latin: terra or tellus; Greek: Gaia or Aia; English: Earth; Russian: Ziemlia; Polish: Ziemia; German: Erde; French: Terre; Sanskrit: vasudha.

It seems there was a pie more than the PIE, Mr. Jones time, and that pie was India. The colonial era began about 1500, and there was much competition.


It would be Space 1999 to show

reading Proto-Sanskrit accurately …😉

 


My YouTube: Sanskrit Readout


The holocaust in the clip is not the Holocaust.

British grammar nazis

Posted on by

Disclaimer: the adjacent — and colored meaningfully yellow — graphic piffle is not intended to mean the Union Jack proper. It is the British Grammar Nazis logo on Facebook.

Grammer

 

The logo dubious pulchritude may be seen in its full down here, also with a click.

British grammar nazis headerNow, let me lay out on the fundamentals of orthography. I do not spell the nazis with a big letter. Big letters, though they do not always import reverence, are reserved for proper nouns everywhere except a beginning.

 

The proper noun Nazis were German nationalists. Their having bombed London during WWII might belong with the semantic field too, and further reasonably connote displeasure on the part of the British people. I mean, I do not have other people’s feelings, but thus I do reckon.

 

Much has been written about the second world war, including Hitler’s evident lack of linguistic finesse. Therefore, I will do some wondering only, on the British who want to be grammar nazis.

 

The Daily Mash offers observations.

 

The way they selflessly dedicate themselves to correct punctuation, for example by pointing out to the staff of a chip shop why the term “chip’s” is a sloppy obfuscation, confirms they are bold and righteous individuals.

 

Grammar nazis share the article and comment.

This pleases me. A lot!

We are doing a service to the world in helping people be rid of their ignorance!

We knew it all the time!

 

It is only after a few lines or whiles that thought emerges.

I suspect someone is taking the p*ss.

 

Grammar nazis do not get irony. Let me think about statistics and implications. Should there be visiting nazis, I promise a brief primer on irony after this indispensable piece of advice about living on the same planet.

 

 

The site has about 50 thousand “likes”. Taking the British population alone, that would make about 50 thousand oddly deficient, among about 63 million people.

 

Some might say it is not so bad. It is not even one percent. Still, it could be better to think literacy, going to England: the guys are permitted to have the UK flag for their capriccio. Such odd types might favor big towns, as London.

 

 

Try for a plain passport photo, that is, without brooches, scarves, ties, anything you do not always carry. The piffle shows the guys’ attention to picture specifics.😉

 

Wave your hand, getting a taxi. It is a simple, therefore legible gesture. Get a map with statues and other tourist attractions in large icons. It is better to take a walk from the National Museum than end up the Piccadilly, owing to small print.😉

 

In hotels, always tick the boxes. Ask for those straight, should you be provided with a form without boxes to tick.😉

 

Mailing letters, get the recorded. They have ID strips. Seeking directions, approach people with newspapers. They could be literate. However, never ever leave your books or papers open and unattended. They might be taken for other utilities.😉

 

Now, the primer on irony. The basics are in the affirmative and the negative. You do not take them for a yes or no merely. Let me quote the Mash:

 

In no way are any of these people vain, arsey pedants.

 

This does not have to mean a refutation, Wikipedia explains.

 

Life cannot be about affirming or denying only. Let me return to the Mash.

 

The way they selflessly dedicate themselves to correct punctuation, for example by pointing out to the staff of a chip shop why the term “chip’s” is a sloppy obfuscation, confirms they are bold and righteous individuals.

 

Antonyms and synonyms are the answer. Mind to stay in context.

 

Laying all that out in detail to a grammar nazi looks discouragingly big a task, hence the handful of thoughts and the primary color, yellow (adjective, reference 3).

 

Grammar nazis look unable to admit that picking on people’s works has no chance to bring anything creative, sophisticated. They do not offer own blogs or websites, especially with serious language work, for evaluation.

Apples grow on noses: two languages – two minds?

Posted on by

Speaking a second language can change everything from problem-solving skills to personality. It is almost as if you are two people, says Catherine de Lange.

 

“Mon espirit paratage — My two minds”, appeared in The New Scientist of May 5th, 2012. Ms. de Lange compares monolingual and bilingual children. Washington Post has her article.

 

Ms. de Lange describes her testing children on syntax. Syntax is about the way we phrase our talk or writing.

 

Both monolinguals and bilinguals could see the mistake in phrases such as “apples growed on trees”, but differences arose when they considered nonsensical sentences such as “apples grow on noses”. The monolinguals, flummoxed by the silliness of the phrase, incorrectly reported an error, whereas the bilinguals gave the right answer, says Ms. de Lange. 

 

Monolingual or multilingual, children get to hear or read fairy tales. It does not matter, if the kid speaks one or more languages. It is important that the child comprehends the words, there was a fairy land, a long time ago, where apples grew on noses.

 

Children learn early that words can have more than one meaning. Figurative thinking does not disturb syntax. Whether in one or many languages ― but dependent on pragmatics ― we could or could not count any noses in picture 1. The Big Apple Corner in picture 2 only might have apples.

 

Language pragmatics deals with talk in context and work with ambiguity.

Noses

Picture 1. Is there even one nose in the picture, if we do not know what noses count?

Apples

Picture 2. Do apples grow square, if we have Big Apple Corners?

 

Thinking the science, the task was most probably deictically misconstrued. The children did not know what noses the talk was about, and thus if to tell the syntax or the pragmatics.

 

Ms. de Lange says she speaks English and French. If we were to follow Ms. de Lange and interpret her test results for a difference between monolingual versus multilingual mentality, we would risk un mal de tête, a headache.

We would have to imagine monolingual people as unable to take a figure of speech, and carrying shields instead of umbrellas, for heavy rain.

We would have to dread multilingual medics, fearing they would be the people to take cardiac cases for just a matter of opinion

Pain

Obviously and fortunately, no such headache naturally can come.

 

Further, both English and French have spoken and written forms. What we write as bread in English is un pain in French.

Boy eating bread

To a child, a test to neglect semantics might be un mal a l’oreille.

Word forms as bread or pain would not have to be in the test. Also in little children, brains entire work for language tasks.

 

Frontal lobes help keep the goal in mind. Temporal lobes tend to word sound, and occipital to word shape. Parietal lobes associate this all ― with the lexicon. Words for physical sensations and food are the basic vocabulary.

 

Ambiguity may provoke “surfing” the language form, especially if the limbic system would detect some emotional discord. When we ignore word sense, go asemantic, distinction between languages becomes much smaller. Pain or bread become mere forms, disagreeable to be mistaken in one language. The forms yet still might be singular or plural, dependent on syntax.

 

The “surfing” is not a developmental stage. Monolingual or multilingual, very young or more advanced in age, it is enough to learn to “surf”.

 

To work on syntax, we can use virtual or invented words ― regardless of age. Interestingly enough, we might get no “difference in mentality” between monolingual or multilingual people. We might not confirm Ms. de Lange results.

 

VIRTUAL WORDS2

Virtual words have an advantage. We can use them to exercise speech sounds without the flummoxing that verbal associations might bring.

 

[th] is the sound in mother;

[th] is the sound in father

[th] is the sound in brother;

[th] is the sound in … pother 😉

 

A car rolls, a doll dances, a troll hops, and a ball bounces. Toys are things. They can be phimos. Every phimo can bimo. Before long, a kid may tell easy if we are correct saying, The phimo bimo , or if we should say, The phimo bimoes.🙂

 

Phimos can bimo.

Multilingualism is becoming an everyday thing in more and more countries and cultures. I like that.

 

I do not like bias about an ability to comprehend, speak, write, read, and communicate in more than one language. I do not like bias about people who speak one language, either. It is not true that monolingual people cannot take a figure of speech. On the other hand, it is not true that multilingualism makes one prone for nonsense.

 

The experiment by Ms. de Lange was biased. Multilingual kids were showed as disinterested in finding if something was real or true. Monolingual children were showed as unable to tell syntax.
 Multilingualism does not require a “different wit”.

 

Bread is always bread.

Multilingual people naturally “can surf”, and monolingual people naturally can learn to “surf”. Importantly, whether multilingual or monolingual, we would not “surf” for serious purposes. Work on syntax is better with virtual words, and then the number of languages might not matter at all. This is what I have for truly syntactic.

 

Another ethical and linguistic concern comes with Ms. de Lange reporting infant brain scans for experimental purposes. There is no way to obtain informed consent from an infant.

 

Read why I cannot see sense in such scans.

Burning the Flag ― where is the language?

Posted on by

The legal profession is a depth of recondite detail the Supreme Court has the expertise firmly to deliberate. 

Themis and the FlagFreedom of speech has been quoted to justify burning the American flag.


United States versus Eichman, United States versus Haggerty, Texas versus Johnson: all cases argued freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

Haggerty’s case would have implied you necessarily make the Flag your piece of cloth before burning. It is when the Flag belongs to an institution as Seattle Capitol Hill Post Office that you get fined.


Let us analyze the First Amendment.


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

To exercise comprehension, we can paraphrase. We can say the First Amendment


forbids the Congress to regulate the matters of religion, to inhibit legal  linguistic behavior by individuals as well as groups or in the media, to delimitate people’s right to convene, or to prevent people’s formally requesting the authorities for reparation of damages.

 

The Supreme Court holding on Eichman says:


The government’s interest in preserving the flag as a symbol did not outweigh the individual right to disparage that symbol through expressive conduct.

 

The First Amendment says, the freedom of speech.

 

Linguistics does recognize symbols or icons. For example, we work with a computer. We click an icon and it takes us to a website. The icon symbolizes the website. If we associate the content, it is only when we know the website.

 

Most icons or symbols are arbitrary and there happens to be some mix-up. It is difficult to agree with Wikipedia to say,

 

Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas or visual images and are used to convey other ideas and beliefs.

 

Dogs are most often companions to humans and households, the other idea to be cats. Still nobody says “dog” to mean “cat”.

 

Wikipedia implies that a red octagon means “stop”, even without language.

Wikiepdia octagon

Wikipedia illustration

There could be hotel, club, or company premises on which the red octagon means “Maintenance staff only”. The reference depends on consensus.

The meaning we could express in words is not inherent to the symbol.
Stop__round For a symbol to have language in it, there has to be a written message.


Symbols are not language.
More, burning cannot be a speech act.

Is there a speech sound produced, if the human just sits silently by a campfire, warming his or her hands? Is there any written or printed language to emerge from the flame? Could the wood or coal crackling and hissing make stanzas, quatrains, epodes? Could we hear an anacrusis?


No, there is no language to come from fire.


What is the meaning of a national flag?

It symbolizes the country, the people, and the language.
The Flag does not correlate with the authorities only.

Even if you do not like anybody around, would rather live in a tent, make own clothes,  and hunt for food
― all that to liberate yourself of American capitalism ―
the nonsense of burning the Flag remains appalling, if to think about cause and effect.


There never would be  the Constitution, without the people fighting for American freedom, also in Fort McHenry, about which The Star Spangled Banner tells. The First Amendment would never have been passed, without the Constitution.

 

Flag associations 3

The First Amendment says that people have the right to the freedom of speech. The Amendment does not say,

Congress shall make no law abridging expressive conduct in association with speech and language …


Fortunately: human expressive behaviors are a very wide spectrum part of which belongs under parental guidance and is not language at all.

 

At the same time, I would not uphold the term of “Flag desecration”. The word desecration suggests abuse on sanctity.

I think flags are for people, as books and knowledge on language.

I have put images of the American flag on my American English grammar books, which are absolutely my human work.


I do not support the Supreme Court verdict. I hope time will bring the change necessary for legislation to discern physically abusive behaviors from speech and language.