Comments on: Washoe http://harveysarles.com/2007/11/02/washoe/ Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:50:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Jacob Freeze http://harveysarles.com/2007/11/02/washoe/comment-page-1/#comment-10122 Jacob Freeze Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:22:23 +0000 http://harveysarles.com/2007/11/02/washoe/#comment-10122 Although it may be as much of a "compliment" as American Sign is ever going to get from the lowest common denominator of academic common sense, it's still possible to wonder if promotion into the category of "human language" actually underestimates the flow of information involved in the "language" of the deaf. Every time I ask my deaf friends to translate what just happened in a few seconds of signing, I get a couple of (written) paragraphs of emotional shading, humorous asides, histories of relationships, and an echo of distant connections that really can't be translated. It's probably possible to measure the byte-rate of signing, and if it turns out to be an order of magnitude greater than the byte-rate of ordinary human speech, as I suspect it would, maybe we could stop treating "language" as a ne plus ultra of interpersonal exchange, and somehow dream up a better compliment for the language of the deaf than a comparison with our own meager capacities. Although it may be as much of a “compliment” as American Sign is ever going to get from the lowest common denominator of academic common sense, it’s still possible to wonder if promotion into the category of “human language” actually underestimates the flow of information involved in the “language” of the deaf.

Every time I ask my deaf friends to translate what just happened in a few seconds of signing, I get a couple of (written) paragraphs of emotional shading, humorous asides, histories of relationships, and an echo of distant connections that really can’t be translated.

It’s probably possible to measure the byte-rate of signing, and if it turns out to be an order of magnitude greater than the byte-rate of ordinary human speech, as I suspect it would, maybe we could stop treating “language” as a ne plus ultra of interpersonal exchange, and somehow dream up a better compliment for the language of the deaf than a comparison with our own meager capacities.

]]> By: Jacob Freeze http://harveysarles.com/2007/11/02/washoe/comment-page-1/#comment-34904 Jacob Freeze Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:22:00 +0000 http://harveysarles.com/2007/11/02/washoe/#comment-34904 Although it may be as much of a "compliment" as American Sign is ever going to get from the lowest common denominator of academic common sense, it's still possible to wonder if promotion into the category of "human language" actually underestimates the flow of information involved in the "language" of the deaf. Every time I ask my deaf friends to translate what just happened in a few seconds of signing, I get a couple of (written) paragraphs of emotional shading, humorous asides, histories of relationships, and an echo of distant connections that really can't be translated. It's probably possible to measure the byte-rate of signing, and if it turns out to be an order of magnitude greater than the byte-rate of ordinary human speech, as I suspect it would, maybe we could stop treating "language" as a ne plus ultra of interpersonal exchange, and somehow dream up a better compliment for the language of the deaf than a comparison with our own meager capacities. Although it may be as much of a “compliment” as American Sign is ever going to get from the lowest common denominator of academic common sense, it’s still possible to wonder if promotion into the category of “human language” actually underestimates the flow of information involved in the “language” of the deaf.

Every time I ask my deaf friends to translate what just happened in a few seconds of signing, I get a couple of (written) paragraphs of emotional shading, humorous asides, histories of relationships, and an echo of distant connections that really can’t be translated.

It’s probably possible to measure the byte-rate of signing, and if it turns out to be an order of magnitude greater than the byte-rate of ordinary human speech, as I suspect it would, maybe we could stop treating “language” as a ne plus ultra of interpersonal exchange, and somehow dream up a better compliment for the language of the deaf than a comparison with our own meager capacities.

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