RE: Common Errors in English - pattern recognition

[Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com>]

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Bruce Byfield wrote:
However, does the fact that different parts of the brain are involved mean that the functions themselves are different? People who have lost part of their brain sometimes regain the skills associated with it, so the simple fact that different parts are involved may not point to a difference.
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It could, yes. It probably depends on a lot of different factors that I don't remember, or that maybe nobody really knows about. The brain is a pretty amazing organ. It does do some interesting things, like restructuring itself if some kind of damage takes place. It may actually come down to whether their relearned ability is to the same level as it was before the damage occurred. So, maybe someone could relearn how to write, but they may not be as good at it, depending on the area of hte brain that was affected.




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Bruce Byfield wrote:
Moreover, although reading and writing obviously are not identical, they obviously overlap closely. Is it possible that the semantic difference does not reflect an actual difference?
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Possible, but I doubt it. That opinion is based on infonesia though so I can't say for sure. :-(



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But people are also inconsistent to the point of messiness. Not everybody would fix on a single standard, even in their own writing...
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Yeah, I could see that. That's why a third party, such as a government board would have to come in. You know, China has gone through this problem . The various uses of their characters have become less standardized at various points in history, and the government steps in to re-standardize them. Again, I'm pulling from memories that have been replaced with Dr. Seuss and Miss Spider.

 
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It strikes me that, in talking about non-standardized spelling, everyone has a tendency to think in terms of standardized spelling. People who know little about languages other than their own sometimes think that learning another one is like deciphering a code, and that there's a one-to-one relation between words in one language and words in another. In the same way, in talking about non-standardized spelling, people assume that there has to be some other form 
of consistency. But that doesn't necessarily follow. If consistency is not a virtue to you in spelling, you may fall into habits, but, you may also deviate because following a pattern simply isn't important to you.
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I think that's because once someone starts to use the same patterns, those patterns become standardized for that person, thus you can't really say there is no standardization. Even if there is internal variation between several forms, that variation would still be part of the person's standardized use.



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People who know little about languages other than their own sometimes think that learning another one is like deciphering a code, and that there's a one-to-one relation between words in one language and words in another.
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I've studied Japanese, Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish, Mayan, and a bunch of others in varying degrees (mostly because of linguistics) and I think that learning another language IS like deciphering a code. I don't think that involves deciphering one-to-one relationships. It involves changing the way you think.

When I was using kanji in my notes, I read them as English because each character was a simple set of graphical marks that represented English. There happened to be a one-to-one correspondence. BUT, when I was reading Japanese, I read the same characters as Japanese. I effectively disassociated the language from the character and left intact its meaning, which is the sort of thing that I think readers in alphabets tend to end up doing. They start out with sounds and eventually attribute meaning to them.

Maybe a dialectal example would be appropriate. I learned to pronounce the word written as "larynx" as follows:

ler - inks

However, here in Sacramento, I've heard it more often pronounced

lar - a - niks

It took me a while to figure out what the heck people were saying. I had no idea. But once I figured it out, made that one-to-one connection, I understood it. Now, I don't even notice the difference, I just accept that the collection of sounds means this thing in my throat. I think the same would occur even with phonetic spelling, you would eventually stop recognizing each letter and start recognizing the whole, if for no other reason than you would be looking for meaning. Even on an individual basis, you would learn how each person wrote and match their patterns, a form of code switching.


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In the same way, in talking about non-standardized spelling, people assume that there has to be some other form 
of consistency. But that doesn't necessarily follow. If consistency is not a virtue to you in spelling, you may fall into habits, but, you may also deviate because following a pattern simply isn't important to you.
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If you want to communicate to someone, you need to be consistent (tech writer tie-in). I would assume that even if consistency didn't matter to someone, if they returned to their inconsistent writing a few years later, they would not be able to read what they'd written and would then wish they had been consistent. That's if there is truly NO pattern in their writing. But I would assume that if you are writing for someone to read, the writer will WANT some form of consistency, otherwise there can be no communication.

I guess I should ask, what do you mean by NON-STANDARD SPELLING. Are you referring to spelling that doesn't conform to a politically prestigious way of writing, or are you referring to something where there is no internal patterns (standardization) invented, borrowed, or implied. They would use a different spelling every time a word is used(For example, a person might write light in one case, lite in another, giglt in another, laite in another, and dafsdaewasdasdfawertgsasdf in another instance, all to refer to the same thing.) Because if you're not talking about the latter, then you have de facto standardization the moment some spelling pattern is reused.

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Fair enough. But, when you're readng for sounds, rather than the shape of the letters, you aren't nearly so dependent on standardization for understanding.
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But you're relying on the shape of the letters to access the sounds. Hmmmmmm.......I see what you're saying, but it just doesn't seem right. Can't put my finger on why though.


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I suspect that we are not talking about simply alternative means of processing written material, but fundamentally different ones.
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Yeah, I could buy that there are differences going on here. I vaguely remember a study that showed that different brain activity took place when someone read phonetic scripts and someone read characters (like Chinese). But I don't remember if that was in context of misunderstandings about Chinese language or a simple discussion on processing two different kinds of information.

This all could be a difference in the way people learn. You know, the whole visual vs auditory learner. I am very obviously a visual learner. You may be an auditory learning. Those two fundamental differences could be a major driving force that differentiates the way we process information. This may also be getting into issues like Gardner's different intelligences.

One thing is for sure, I want to reread some of my linguistics books now. :-)


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Sean Hower - tech writer
http://hokum.freehomepage.com



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