It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
ScarletNyx
Everyone knows that you do not try to understand vampires, persay, you just burn their Coven Hot Topic down.
The notion that there is a regular correlation between the form of a word and its meaning is, of course, controversial. In this dissertation my intention has been to shed light on that controversy by conducting a variety of tests -- for the most part on a fairly large scale -- which quantify the extent of the correspondence between sound and meaning in words. I found in the course of this project that phonosemantic correlations were much more pervasive than I initially anticipated and certainly greater than is generally supposed in the linguistics literature. Furthermore, I cannot but see that these tests show that quite general natural laws are productively operative in language which account for most of the correlations observed. If further research indeed corroborates my findings, then it follows that the meaning of every word in every language is in part (only in part!) inherent in its form. The sign is therefore not wholly arbitrary, and it is not possible to devise an abstract representation of language which is entirely unrelated to the form of language itself. The most important results of the experiments in this dissertation seem to me to be these:
* I find that much confusion regarding linguistic iconism can be attributed to the assumption that 'word semantics' is best understood as 'word reference'. I believe these tests show this presumption to be unhelpful. If a word's meaning is analyzed into components -- only one of which is its referent -- it can be shown that some aspects of a word's meaning are arbitrary and others are not. It's therefore not the case that in some words or languages iconism holds more sway than in others. Rather since all words must have these requisite semantic components in order to function at all, the semantics of any word must be in part predictable from its form and in part not.
* Reference is essentially arbitrary. One cannot predict the referent of a word just by hearing it. In words with more concrete reference, the component of reference is more salient, and the iconic sound-meaning is consequently less salient. Therefore, the apparent effect of the sound-meaning is inversely proportional on the concreteness of the referent.
* Individual phonemes and phonetic features are meaning-bearing. They each have a unique semantics which can be identified by first measuring the semantic disproportions within phonologically defined classes of words and then the converse -- measuring the phonological disproportions within semantic classes. One finds in this way that every word which contains a given phoneme bears an element of meaning which is absent in words not containing this phoneme. One finds further than the effect of the phoneme-meaning varies with the position that the phoneme bears within the syllable. In addition, one finds that all phonemes which have a common phonetic feature also have a common element of meaning.
* It is important to distinguish types of sound-meaning correlations:
- The least fundamental kind of sound-meaning correlation is onomatopoeia. It does not concern me in this dissertation.
- The type of correlation which accounts for the 'phonesthemes' or disproportions between semantic classes and phonological form is most commonly called 'Clustering'. I refer to it also as Phonosemantic Association in order to emphasize that it is a side-effect of a natural and productive tendency in human psychology to associate any form with a coherent referent.
- The most fundamental and least salient type of linguistic iconism I will refer to as 'True Iconism', or the level on which form and content are one. This type of correlation is universal, productive in every word, non-arbitrary, and blind to all higher level linguistic distinctions such as referent, part of speech, semantic class and argument structure.
Brotherman
reply to post by turnaround
Here if you are interested in this stuff this book is well worth the read
Link
try getting it in a library, my old college actually carried this.
Also you may find this very fascinating
The notion that there is a regular correlation between the form of a word and its meaning is, of course, controversial. In this dissertation my intention has been to shed light on that controversy by conducting a variety of tests -- for the most part on a fairly large scale -- which quantify the extent of the correspondence between sound and meaning in words. I found in the course of this project that phonosemantic correlations were much more pervasive than I initially anticipated and certainly greater than is generally supposed in the linguistics literature. Furthermore, I cannot but see that these tests show that quite general natural laws are productively operative in language which account for most of the correlations observed. If further research indeed corroborates my findings, then it follows that the meaning of every word in every language is in part (only in part!) inherent in its form. The sign is therefore not wholly arbitrary, and it is not possible to devise an abstract representation of language which is entirely unrelated to the form of language itself. The most important results of the experiments in this dissertation seem to me to be these:
* I find that much confusion regarding linguistic iconism can be attributed to the assumption that 'word semantics' is best understood as 'word reference'. I believe these tests show this presumption to be unhelpful. If a word's meaning is analyzed into components -- only one of which is its referent -- it can be shown that some aspects of a word's meaning are arbitrary and others are not. It's therefore not the case that in some words or languages iconism holds more sway than in others. Rather since all words must have these requisite semantic components in order to function at all, the semantics of any word must be in part predictable from its form and in part not.
* Reference is essentially arbitrary. One cannot predict the referent of a word just by hearing it. In words with more concrete reference, the component of reference is more salient, and the iconic sound-meaning is consequently less salient. Therefore, the apparent effect of the sound-meaning is inversely proportional on the concreteness of the referent.
* Individual phonemes and phonetic features are meaning-bearing. They each have a unique semantics which can be identified by first measuring the semantic disproportions within phonologically defined classes of words and then the converse -- measuring the phonological disproportions within semantic classes. One finds in this way that every word which contains a given phoneme bears an element of meaning which is absent in words not containing this phoneme. One finds further than the effect of the phoneme-meaning varies with the position that the phoneme bears within the syllable. In addition, one finds that all phonemes which have a common phonetic feature also have a common element of meaning.
* It is important to distinguish types of sound-meaning correlations:
- The least fundamental kind of sound-meaning correlation is onomatopoeia. It does not concern me in this dissertation.
- The type of correlation which accounts for the 'phonesthemes' or disproportions between semantic classes and phonological form is most commonly called 'Clustering'. I refer to it also as Phonosemantic Association in order to emphasize that it is a side-effect of a natural and productive tendency in human psychology to associate any form with a coherent referent.
- The most fundamental and least salient type of linguistic iconism I will refer to as 'True Iconism', or the level on which form and content are one. This type of correlation is universal, productive in every word, non-arbitrary, and blind to all higher level linguistic distinctions such as referent, part of speech, semantic class and argument structure.
Heres the full dissertation
I found out to understand FL a bit better, it started making sense more when you start understanding the breaking down of language into smaller and smaller parts, this has very interesting information. I posted a ton of links earlier on along with other members, I keep my conclusions to myself but still check up on this thread as new information presents itself.
You keep your conclusions to yourself? Now why is that? Do you always do so? Or just in this instance?
Eidolon your alive? The mossad hasn't come for you?
Jonjonj
lostgirl
abeverage
You could probably do a summation better than I did if you want? But how would you edit the thread, that is something only the site owner can do possibly a mod...
And what would you consider a dead end? Sometimes in a conversation a silly ancidote can trigger a brain storm on a subject. Conversation that is to linear and does not flow is just an info dump.
Well, I don't think I could do a better summary, but that may be a moot point, because your point about particular conversations or anecdotes triggering "brain storms" shows the value in attempting to 'pare down' the thread as a whole, rather than merely summarizing...and since the primary reason to make the thread more 'user friendly', would be in hopes of attracting new contributors who (being able to read the evolution of the thread right from the beginning) would bring new perspective, hopefully inspiring new avenues of thought and research...
As far as dead ends, a better term might be dead 'weight'...I was thinking more along the lines of getting rid of certain sorts of posts, for example:
Ones which only (unbeknownst to the poster) reiterate points which were already made and followed up on earlier in the thread...
Ones which, very early in the thread, set everyone off on a tangent of research followed by conclusions which were subsequently shown to have no validity...
Certainly posts which (while nice at the time) said nothing more than various versions of 'great thread, really enjoying it'...
And then once you get to page 20 or so, there are so many posts from people who only read the first several pages (if that) and made comments that have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what the thread is even about!
But I suppose this is all a moot point as well considering, as you said, only the site owner can do....unless the site owner could be persuaded to allow an exception...?
I don't know, it just seems to me such a waste when any thread gets to such a high number of pages that (regardless how enticing the subject matter) members are too over-whelmed at the idea of wading thru up to a thousand posts or more in order to have the background needed to contribute pertinent info, ideas, or insights...
So, that was my thinking...if anyone knows anyone who has any 'pull' with the ATS powers that be...well, it might be worth asking if the thread could be edited in this way - that is, if anyone else still feels that the thread has enough value for the sort of effort such editing would involve....
I have absolutely no pull with "TPTB" However let me say that your ideas are basically anathema to anybody who uses this site for knowledge. You really don't seem to understand the idea at all do you? And guess what? I havent read the subsequent pages on PURPOSE
lostgirl
reply to post by Brotherman
Hello Brotherman, it's nice to see you back here…I wish you were able to put your conclusions into words (though I totally understand how difficult that can be, I hate trying to 'distill' my thoughts down into sentence size chunks), you've always been one of the best contributor's to this thread, well and elsewhere too…
So, um, I know it's rude of me to ask, and I absolutely understand if you don't, but I would love a u2u of the "spooky" stuff you sent to Gut…my curiosity antennas are going crazy…but no worries if it's something you can't share, I just figured it wouldn't hurt to ask..
Don't know what to make of this other than thought it would be something of interest to you:
blogs.sos.wa.gov...
From Aug 4 2012
www.realufos.net...
(This next with Pics)
www....(nolink)/crop-circle-appears-in-washington-state-815
From Sept 10 2013
www.ghosttheory.com...
But there is a whole lot more in this area you can get reports on here are the adjacent counties
Ferry County, Washington - north
Stevens County, Washington - northeast
Spokane County, Washington - east
Whitman County, Washington - southeast
Adams County, Washington - south
Grant County, Washington - west
Okanogan County, Washington - northwest
and here is a list of reported sightings
www.nuforc.org...
I came across this stuff researching something else, You know I usually don't delve to far into this sort of thing at least here on ATS much but I thought I would share this little bit of stuff with you figuring maybe you can do something with it or just may enjoy reading it
…Suppose that for the last thirty years or so a massive effort has been going on within U.S. government agencies such as the CIA, the NRO,and the Air Force, to study the UFO phenomenon. Not in an attempt to really solve it, since such a solution is still beyond the reach of our science, but in an effort to use it, to manipulate it as a cover for something else.
Perhaps our military scientists have discovered a way to manufacture flying disks as a platform for reconnaissance operations, for intelligence gathering, for counterterrorism. Some of my contacts tell me that these disks do fly and vary in size from two feet for laser-ranging devices and automated flying cameras to thirty or forty feet for the devices used for such physiological effects as putting people to sleep or inducing paralysis or hallucinations in enemy troops. And such devices do exist,either in test sites across the U.S. or on the drawing boards of various Silicon Valley firms andWashington think tanks. These nonlethal weapons have been actually deployed in various counterterrorism operations around the world. It would be important to keep the knowledge of this technology secure, although hundreds of people are clearly in a position to observe it from time to time. Making people believe that they are observing flying saucers might be a clever ploy.
Let us not forget that Bill Moore, the originator of the MJ-12 case, worked for Agent Doty of OSI, and thatAgent Doty, alias Falcon, worked for an Air Force officer named Hennessey, who was head of security for the Stealth project. Perhaps this connection is perfectly innocent or spurious. But why isthere no official effort to clarify it once and for all? If the mysterious Falcon is only a helpless turkey, why not expose him before the world?
In the failed Desert One operation of April 1980, organized by the Carter administration to attempt the heroic rescue of the American hostages from Tehran, some witnesses claim to have seen a disk resembling a UFO. It was said to be a platform for nonlethal weapons, intended to paralyze or otherwise disable the Iranian guards. And the code word for that part of the operation, of which Richard Secord and Oliver North had been among the planners, was none other than Snowbird , a name that my reader may recall seeing before. It is the code word that Bill Cooper claims to have seen attached to a secret project to test flying saucers captured from alleged extraterrestrial aliens....Again, we need to ask, which is the cover and which is the genuine project? What better cover is there for such craft, if they are tested at Dreamland, than the UFO phenomenon itself? What better channel for deception is there than the groups of true believers who are already convinced that the extraterrestrials are about to land?...
What if that deception has other goals, even more far-reaching? To the New Age idealists, the announcement that aliens are here would bring the culmination of many decades of dreams. It would validate all their group meditations on mountaintops, the loving hopes, the prayers for peace. It would give all of us something to worship at a time when the leaders of our traditional religions have made fools of themselves, at a time when the younger generation has very few heroes it can look up to. To the hardened ufologist, it would bring respectability at last,vindication after years of dedicated, lonely research, a chance to confront such skeptics as Philip Klass and Carl Sagan (or perhaps, in a more mundane way, a doubting brother-in-law) and to tell them “I told you so!”
The revelations that aliens are here, that flying disks have been captured, are too good to be true.But if these claims have been manufactured to provide a cover for real flying platforms, then these false revelations suddenly make perfect sense. Engineers and military officers telling their children on their deathbeds about the strange technology they have seen over the Nevada desert will be able to come up with nothing more specific than a muddled story of flying saucers and extraterrestrial craft, because the cover sticks closely to the imagery of the ufologists that already exists in the surrounding culture. Thus the secret can always be preserved. And it is possible to focus that imagery, through a few carefully crafted hoaxes, into the expectation of a particular type of entity, a particular kind of craft.
REVELATIONS: Alien Contact and Human Deception (PDF)