Raf

Let me just add a couple of things before going over Chockfull's last substantive post and deciding which pieces require a response (ie, which pieces haven't already been discussed to death). First off, when I say it's not an unreasonable request for Chockfull to reach out to a linguist to get answers to his questions, I'm not just blowing smoke. The results of one researcher's work seems to be in conflict with those of every other researcher reviewing the same phenomenon, and linguists who've gone over that researcher's work disagree with his analysis. But he stands by it. But he does agree with the other researchers on the conclusion that it's not an actual, human language. I've tracked this researcher down and e-mailed him for clarification. So what if he never answers me? I tried. Best I could do. I say, give it a shot. For wall we know, Chockfull may find a linguist who agrees that everyone we've been discussing is a hack, disrespected in the linguistic community at large, and we'd never know it because we're a bunch of amateurs dissecting 40-year-old studies. Or maybe Chockfull will get the same answers Larry Holton got. I don't know. Second, after I posted Holton's article on the SIT Reading Room thread (it's in doctrinal, if anyone's interested), I wrote the following: "Although the article I posted agrees with my conclusion, I would not have cited it in the original thread. I probably would have gone to his sources and posted them. If Vern is somewhat biased, he at least provided useful info. This guy seems to have been on a mission. My bet is we would have spent too much time discussing why he shouldn't be ignored just because of his conclusion." Today's response from Chockfull proves my prediction 100 percent correct. Holton hears an agenda. Chockfull's right: the chief value he brings to this discussion is a broadening of available sources. But even I noted above that Holton lists answers that don't always seem to follow the questions that he asked (the "dead languages" question stands out in this regard: the answer he posts does not seem to adequately address the question, in my opinion). And this criticism is coming from someone (me) who agrees with Holton! His article, as a primary source, is useless. But it does point us to better primary sources. I also want to make something clear about Landry: I knew this was a college paper the first time I read it. It practically screamed it. If you ever spent any time grading college papers, you know what they look like. Landry was poorly argued, poorly organized and poorly cited, at least when it comes to Samarin. Based on what I've been reading, I'm inclined to believe he wrote everything off Malony and Lovekin and did not review a single research work outside it. There was nothing in Landry's paper that wasn't in the first 10 pages of Malony and Lovekin, and what he did quote from it was misleading. The exception was Landry's conclusion, a quote from a tongues speaking friend lamenting the controversy over the issue. That should have been a sign to anyone that we were not dealing with a work of unbiased research. I do not recall seeing a bibliography in Landry's paper, but if he did include one, I'd bet good money he just copied it from Malony and Lovekin's bibliography. Third point: I need to go back over Chockfull's earlier post, but I thought I saw at a casual first glance an allegation that Nida had not conducted his own research into glossolalia. This assertion, if it was indeed made, is certainly inaccurate. Nida published in 1964 "A Case of Pseudo-Linguistic Structure," in which he concluded there was no scientific evidence that glossolalia produces known languages (cited in Malony & Lovekin, p. 8). When the director of translations of the American Bible Society, who is also a respected linguist, comes to such a conclusion, at the very least it warrants a close look. But it would be so very wrong to dismiss him as someone who has not examined glossolalia on his own. The opposite appears to be the case. I'd love to see his work. In a casual Google search, I see evidence that every single linguist cited by Holton has actually studied glossolalia to some degree. Most were done ages ago and are not available online. Nida's supposedly is, but damned if I can find it. Finally, in his farewell address, Chockfull states that he is going to believe God rather than linguists (I'm paraphrasing. I'm sure he'll come back to correct me if I've misrepresented him). I submit this is a false choice. This is not an either-or proposition. If the linguists are right, it doesn't mean the Bible is wrong. It means our understanding of it is wrong. Getting to a right understanding would take an enormous amount of humility, starting with the admission to yourself that in your hunger to manifest the power of God, you took a step without him. Or you could just disagree with me and we're all happy. I have a belief. You don't share it. This bothers you? Doesn't bother me one whit. Christians disagree with each other about far more substantial things than this.

Seeya

I thought it was a pretty reasonable suggestion

Now that's funny in any language.

Quickly going over Goodman's book on SIT, I think I can honestly say she contributes nothing to either side of the conversation. From what I've been able to tell, others used her raw data in linguistic analyses, and she does spell it all out with lots of detail about phonetic analysis and whatnot. But she neither tests a hypothesis nor attempts a classification related to linguistics. She seems entirely concerned with the psychological state of the glossolalists, and does not seem to recognize the sample bias that Samarin pointed out in criticisms of her earlier articles and criticisms of her book after it was published. Aside from her raw data, she's useless to our discussion. Also checked out Malony and Lovekin. They're really non-judgmental. To a fault, in my opinion. They put Samarin (an actual linguist) on a par with Sherrill (a Guideposts writer who appears to have met every single person on earth with an unverified second hand anecdote about it really happening I swear). It should be pointed out that one of the two, I forget which, is a glossolalist, raising questions about their willingness to grant Sherrill more legitimacy than he deserves. Their summary of Sherrill is heavy on the anecdotes but not terribly impressed with the story of how Sherrill (HEY! LOOK HERE! IT WAS SHERRILL! NOT SAMARIN!) put glossolalia in front of a team of linguists and they were able to spot the gibberish right away. My problem with that account is now manifold, but two problems override the rest: 1. We still don't know who the linguists are. Perhaps Sherrill named them in his book. 2. We still don't know what the gibberish was. Samarin isolated gibberish from his studies even when the gibberish was presented to him as real glossolalia. What did Sherrill call gibberish? We don't know. If it was free vocalization practiced by someone who thought this was linguistic nonsense, then their ability to distinguish between THAT and SIT would have to be considered impressive. If it was Muh muh muh muh muh, then we would have to be a tad less impressed. Perhaps his book will shed some light on the matter. Anyway, by elevating Sherrill to the same status as actual linguistics research, Malony and Lovekin are able to assert that the linguistic evidence is less unanimous than it actually appears to be. Mind you, this is tantamount to giving the "flat earth" theory equal time in discussions of geography and geology. But I could be wrong. I haven't read Sherrill. Malony and Lovekin don't do any of their own linguistics research. They review the work of others. At one point they quote Samarin about SIT not being "haphazard," but they fully recognize his opinion and conclusion that SIT is "fundamentally not language," and they take it for granted as his opinion without comment. They recognize that Sherrill's anecdotes are not quite as strong, inthe objective scientific sense, as Samarin's findings. At no point do they even dare suggest that Samarin failed to use the scientific method and therefore his research and conclusions are shoddy. But Landry's quotation of Malony and Lovekin quoting Samarin is, in retrospect, laughable. Sorry. There's no other word for it. It was so selective and misrepresentative of everything they say about Samarin that it can't even be argued that it was a fair quote. We know, as a matter of fact, that in later writings, Samarin actually DOES describe SIT as being "more or less haphazard." So to quote him saying it's not is to misunderstand the point he's making, which was that the glossolalist puts a lot of effort into making SIT sound like a language. I do not recall specifically if Landry listed four of Samarin's books in his bibliography. If he did, it makes his misrepresentation of Landry even less forgivable. I saw no evidence he had the slightest idea what Samarin's conclusions were. I do see evidence that Chockfull has confused so many writers with what they said about which researcher that I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Landry HAD no bibliography, much less that he was steeped in four of Samarin's books. The actual studies of linguists (Samarin, Nida, and others briefly summarized in Malony and Lovekin) pretty much say the same thing: Glossolalists rearrange the phonemes of their own native language, throw in phonemes from other languages to which they've been exposed, and use the normal intonations, cadences and patterns of their native languages to produce glossa. That's the evidence. It's not that they don't recognize the language. It's that there's no language to recognize. They're babbling. It's sophisticated. It's creative. But it's babbling. It doesn't take a spirit to rearrange a few sounds and make it appear to be a foreign language to the unlearned. No, it's not proof. But it's not proof because nothing ever will be. If every possible justification for language is accepted ("muh muh muh is "Christ" in a language not heard since the Tower of Babel... and he took that seriously? It was a flipping joke!) then no examination that concludes non-language can be.

I've been using the terms "phonemic" and "phonetic" interchangeably. Chalk it up to my status as a layman. A linguist would probably smack me down for confusing the terms. I think we on this thread share a limited understanding of them: they mean the same thing to us. So if you don't need me to be more precise, I'm not going to bother learning the distinction.

Also seeing evidence that it may be correct to assume Samarin was not born again. Or it may not be. He did produce his own glossolalia, but had a real hard time overcoming his inhibition to do it. But he knew at the time it was his own behavior. He did not think he was doing anything Biblical. Amazing things, books.

I mentioned before that the researcher who found the anomalous glossolalia sample was not a linguist but an expert on speech. Turns out his work was reviewed by three linguists (Nida and Samarin were two of them), and they fundamentally disagreed with his findings. They determined that the phonemic structure of the glossa that was produced matched English, though the glossa itself took on, at different times, a superficial resemblance to Spanish and Russian, using no phonemes unique to either language. For example, one of the words produced was "brosh," which might sound like a Russian word but presents no problem for the English speaker. The transcription of the full glossa was decidedly NOT Russian. So a non-linguist found a variation of phonemes that did not match the phonemic structure of the speaker, but because his work was peer-reviewed, linguists were able to check it out for themselves and did not agree with his linguistic analysis. I still wouldn't close the case. The speech expert stood by his analysis.

Geisha, that was the first link I posted in the SIT reading room. Some of those answers don't quite follow from the questions. Others do. I found Nida's answer to be the most interesting. First, because he answers the question I've been asking all day, and second, because of who he was: secretary of translations for the American Bible Society. Go ahead, accuse him of being biased against SIT because he's not born again. (Sheesh). ;) So the question I've been asking all day, why weren't the phonetic inventories of the glossas compared to the inventories of the known languages? Because the researchers continually find that the glossas ARE traceable -- to the native language of the speaker and certain phonemes that they picked up from other languages with which they were known to come into contact. Well, shoot me. So there was never anything unusual for them to look for. They never did a phonemic inventory comparison because they never needed to. I'm aware of only one exception to this. The researcher concluded it was not a language. But he wasn't a linguist. On what basis did he draw that conclusion? Seems unfair to my opponents that he would reach such a conclusion with such a profound anomaly at his disposal. Will report more when I learn more.

Discovered a little more about Helene Smith, the medium who claimed to produce a foreign language, which Samarin concluded on the basis of apparently limited information was "glossolalic." The investigator who studied her for three years concluded she was full of crap. He called her work "the naive and somewhat puerile work of an infantile imagination." Translation: Sounded good. A very detailed fraud. But a fraud. No evidence she was a medium at all. I know, I was shocked too.

"Glossolalia is fundamentally not language." Samarin. How we can get from that to "no one says just because they don't understand it doesn't mean they're saying no one on earth can understand it" is beyond my comprehension. You may argue that he did not demonstrate this to your satisfaction. But he sure as hell said it.

I've answered this multiple times. You've ignored it. I'm not answering it again. Read the flipping thread. Seriously. I am NOT wasting my time correcting your errors again after they've been corrected. That's why it's so FRUSTRATING arguing with you. Read the thread. When you find the answer, post it here. I'm not going to do your homework for you. If this were something that has not been addressed multiple times, I would answer it. But damn, already.

Could you please stop confusing Landry's term paper with real research and exegesis?

"Why did you break up the encounter with my pet python?" "I discovered it had a crush on me."

Mind you, I'm not conceding the point. I'm merely dropping it because I don't need it anymore. There is no profession on earth better suited to identify languages than those who study linguistics. I have a confidence in them that you don't share. That is a failure to find common ground. We can't argue without common ground. But you made a valuable point: if they had found a language they recognized, they would be obliged to report it. They have not. So my case is not proved, nor can it ever be. BUT YOUR case is not proved, and it most certainly can be. There is no evidence distinguishing real SIT from fakery. There is evidence, but not definitive proof, distinguishing it from known human languages. All the testable evidence leans in one direction. None of the testable evidence leans in the other direction. Anecdotal evidence is not testable. I can only argue from the testable evidence we have. The people best qualified to identify the languages produced in glossolalia have failed to detect any. That's as good as I'm going to get for you. Bring in one glossolalist who produces one language a disinterested observer can recognize and report in an observable setting, try not to lose the IDs of the speaker and observer for pete's sake, verify that the speaker truly did not know the language in question, and we're done; I'm wrong. Tall order? Not nearly as tall as expecting a linguist to affirm knowledge of every language ever spoken on earth throughout all time before allowing him to call made up free vocalization what it is. Why haven't the researchers compared the phonemic inventory of glossa to the phonemic inventory of known languages? They can, with many, many languages. But they never report doing so. Why?

Using that logic, nothing, including gibberish, including admitted fakery, can ever be ruled out as a language. This is what I mean when I say no test, null hypothesis or otherwise, can satisfy your particularly absolute demand for proof to a level of certainty that we can both accept. You can't even prove something you KNOW to be made up is not a language, to any degree of confidence. How do you know Muh muh muh muh muh isn't a language? Maybe it's the word for Christ in a language no one's heard since the dispersion from the tower of Babel (presumably the dawn of modern languages). So if you're arguing that the field of linguistics is incapable of addressing this issue, you've robbed me of any ability to say anything other than what I think. How dare you demand proof when you so effectively demonstrate that no amount of evidence will suffice? Ah, but I have a demand for proof that the opposing side CAN meet.

Agreed. Sadly for this effort, I threw out all my TWI tapes and books years ago. This includes Gartmore Weekly Tapes. Click here for why I did that.

And we disagree on why, but there are only two possibilities: It was a language, and they failed to recognize it; or it wasn't a language. They insist on the latter, and the former is speculative. You're entitled to the speculation. Not going to argue it anymore. Sure they can. I'm not sure HOW MANY languages. But phonemic inventories are not hard to come by, especially if this is your field of work. But it hasn't been an issue in the research we've been reviewing. WHY?

Actually, while that would be interesting, our self-consciousness about the controversy might rule us out as test subjects. I would rather gather up all those Gartmore Weekly Tapes on which the SIT and interpretation were actually recorded and widely distributed ("wide" being a relative term, since we have no idea what the circulation numbers ever were). Of course, a language known to the speaker but unknown to the English speaking audience might be an easier thing to pull off in a European setting than in an American one. Multilingualism is far more common outside the U.S. Thus, we would not be able to rule out fakery even if we saw a known language in that particular setting unless we knew for a fact that the speaker had no prior knowledge of that language. And no, I would not put such a deception past Gartmore House. Sorry if that offends anyone, but if you think Chris Geer is above deceiving a crowd, you haven't been paying attention. *** Depending on how old Samarin was at the time of his writing (late 1960s, mid 1970s) he could very easily have passed away by now. Wouldn't surprise me one whit. But he's not the only linguist out there. I've e-mailed three asking for background on or copies of their published research OR to find out how ongoing research is progressing. Haven't heard back from them (nor would I expect to, but it's worth a shot). *** Oh, I didn't think you were. I just wouldn't be able to blame anyone who dismissed the research on that grounds. Assuming all the findings of all the research we've reviewed to be pointing to the truth, one could still say, "Well, they didn't test us." And I'd have no comeback to that. *** Back to the question I posed in my last two posts: anyone? anyone? Oh, but it is. SIT and TIP were central, crucial aspects of TWI theology. I contend it played a significant role in the cult's ability to ensnare us and keep us devoted to it in practice while we were there and in principle when we left. It only needs to be moved to soap if good questions stop being raised. Good questions are still being raised. Hey! Speaking of good questions... anyone? anyone?

I think we can safely assume that it was not. I can only look at the research we have. I mentioned this oodles of pages ago. There are some things that the researchers review that we can easily find commonality with in TWI. This is mostly in the descriptions of how people are led into tongues. There are clear doctrino-practical differences that any of us will recognize, as well as similarities. If you'd like me to list them, I will. But I could not argue with anyone who chooses to dismiss these studies solely on the basis that they didn't study our peculiar (decent and in order, we do our own interpreting) brand of SIT. We were not the same as much of the rest of Christianity on this front. In fact, we were particularly proud of that fact. But let's not lose the other question here: Why do the researchers not describe their efforts to match the glossa to known languages other than the native language of the speaker? Anyone? Anyone? Come on, it's easy.

An actual good question is raised here: I posit that if the researchers found a sample of glossolalia that did not match the phonetic strata of the native language of the speaker (allowing for some "innovation" in borrowed sounds to which the speaker would have access without a full command of the language in question -- my Chanukkah example), that the researchers would then be able to take the phonetic strata of the glossa and compare it to known languages. We have no evidence that this activity was ever performed by any of the researchers. They sure as heck don't go into detail about it in the material we've been reviewing. WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THIS? Does anyone have an answer? Anyone? Beuller? Frye? Why, I have an answer. And it's an easy one. But does anyone else?

Why do I keep thinking WordWolf is two words?

I thought it was "you'll shoot your eye out," which would make it "A Christmas Story." I'm gonna try this one: I can't find another standout line from this movie, but if you know the movie, you'll get it. Hint: It has something in common with E.T. (but not in plot or actors or anything like that). The quote: "That is one nutty hospital."

Understood. Too blunt and accusatory. Kudos to you for seeing past that. We were manipulated by a cult whose erroneous doctrines and practices introduced error into every aspect of our lives. To admit just how far they were able to reach into your life and mine takes an uncompromising honesty. It wasn't the evidence of fakery that persuaded me. It was the absence of proof of veracity.

Sorry, Word Wolf. Apparently making an observation, asking a question, formulating a hypothesis, predicting an outcome, testing the data, analyzing the test results and forming a conclusion is only the scientific method if you write it all down. If you don't write it all down, it's not the scientific method. Then it's just thinking, I guess. Never mind that the scientific method was developed as an articulation of the critical thinking process in the first place... Anyone who thinks the milk example is not an easy to follow walk through the scientific method has no business lecturing me, Samarin or anyone else on its proper application. This is all so much easier than its been made out to be. When multiple scientists in multiple fields study the same phenomenon and come to the same conclusion, is your first instinct that they all failed to use the scientific method? Really? Ok.