Raf

So, getting back to the scientifically valid area of classification: If we have an item with a set of known properties, such as a language, and an item with a set of unknown properties, such as a glossa, we can compare the properties (phonemic strata) of the unknown with the properties (phonemic strata) of the known. Goodman did this. Samarin did this. Other linguists and researchers did this. They have been unable to match glossa with known languages. We do not know if this was done with the anomalous case study. We need more data on that one. We have the researcher's conclusion, but it's not good enough. I don't accept his conclusion at this point even though it supports my position. To my knowledge, no one has taken the "null hypothesis" approach and applied it to the hypothesis that "all SIT is free vocalization." Such an approach would not produce any statistically valuable result, because this is a question of classification, not hypothesis testing. It is enough to search for a glossa that DOES produce a language. THAT would be a meaningful result. The null hypothesis approach is a red herring that, if conducted, would produce a rejectable result. The science of classification is a better way to approach the subject matter we are discussing. It will and must always be acknowledged that not all potential samples will be examined. The result will never be final. But it never needs to be. We can stop when we find ONE glossa classified as an actual human language. That's how honest people review research. They don't dismiss innate human abilities just because it threatens their predetermined conclusion.

It is true. I should have waited for another mod. Draw whatever conclusions you'd like. The thread is open again. I locked the thread because we were BOTH getting out of hand. I don't think there's a single reader who would disagree with that. A cooling off period was in order. I stand by that. Had I been an observer and not a participant, I would have done the same thing. I waited for you to get the last word and I had every intention of either reopening the thread myself or having another mod step in to do so. I agree: it was an abuse of the mod authority, but only insofar as I did it myself and did not wait for someone else to step in. The other mods will determine my "punishment."

Waysider, I have a problem with studies and presentations that indicate that SIT is connected to dissociation or a trance-like state. It is unfortunate that those studies draw conclusions based on observed evidence while ignoring evidence that we all know to be true, namely, that SIT does not require the speaker to go into any such state. Samarin actually recognizes this and dismisses the psychological findings of Goodman and others who drew similar conclusions. They made a documentable sample error and drew incorrect conclusions based on it. The people they observed may well have gone into such a state, but going into such a state is not a requirement of SIT. It is for that reason that I have been reluctant to cite Goodman, et. al. They are on strong ground when they actually analyze what is spoken and compare the phonemic strata to the native language of the speaker and to known languages. They are on weaker ground, because of their samples, when they draw psychological conclusions. Again, this is a documentable and verifiable observation, one that has been made and accounted for by other researchers. For the past two weeks, I have been trying to track down a case study in which a 61-year-old Pentecostal man practicing SIT produced phonemes that the researcher could not account for in the speaker's native language (English) or any language that person is known to have been in contact with. The researcher's conclusion was that the utterance was "language-like," but he could not identify the language (I'm using that vague term out of fairness. The researcher actually concluded it was not a known language, but I don't know how he came to that conclusion and I am unwilling to repeat it even though the conclusion supports my position). It sounds pretty compelling to me. However, the researcher was an expert in speech, not in linguistics. I do not know what he means by "language-like" and I don't know on what basis he discounted the utterance as a known language. Did he compare the phonemic strata that was observed to the phonemic strata of known languages and fail to find a match? Did he run it past a team of linguists to do the same? We don't know. We only have a rather incomplete description of what the findings were. The information I have on this study comes second hand from two sources. One is Poythress (I alluded to this MANY pages ago, but it was ignored). The other is a published response to the study accessible on the George Mason University Web site. The published response is interesting for two reasons. First, it provides the majority of the summary of findings that I just gave in the previous paragraph, and second, the person compares THAT research to the raw data (samples, phonemic structure, questionnaires, etc) found in the works of Samarin, Goodman, Kildahl and the other researchers we have been discussing. Stop and read that last sentence again: an independent researcher was able to access the raw data upon which Samarin based his research and conclusions. This is the raw data that, it has been suggested, does not exist. "You're not sharing it because you don't have it." Remember? I can understand why THAT statement was made, but it is in error. I do have it. I am reviewing it. You can't cite someone's raw data and use it to conduct further research if that raw data has not been collected or published. I have one issue with the published response to the Pentecostal case study: while I am impressed with the quality of the writing, the documentation, and the evident reliance on raw data (that supposedly does not exist because one person on this thread said so), I have no indication whatsoever of who the writer (other than her name) is or what qualifies her to conduct such a study. Was she a student writing a term paper? Did she get an A? Or was HER review shoddy? That a non-linguist (the one who did the case study) could not detect a language doesn't impress me. A language may well have been produced, and I will have been proven wrong. That the same non-linguist could label the utterance "language-like" equally does not impress me. As yet, I do not know his basis for making such an assertion. But the case study raises a question I must address, one way or another: Can a person engaging in free vocalization produce phonemes with which he is not familiar? There is no earthly reason to suggest he cannot, but we would expect such occurrences to be exceedingly rare (and, in fact, they are: both Poythress and the other independent researcher agree that the case study's findings are anomalous and do not represent the majority of glossolalia that has been studied). But our foray into the research was never about proving my case to a reasonable scientific confidence interval blah blah blah. It was ALWAYS about looking for any evidence to suggest SIT was producing a language unknown to the speaker. Science tests hypotheses to determine whether they are true. To do so, they employ the scientific method that has been invoked on this thread multiple times. But scientists do NOT employ such a method when they are not testing a hypothesis. The relevant scientific activity that WE are looking at involves classification, not hypothesis testing. Classification involves taking an unknown, unidentified or uncategorized object or phenomenon and comparing it to known, identified and categorized objects or phenomena to look for a match. The hypothesis that SIT is free vocalization has not been tested. This is not a failure to employ the scientific method resulting in shoddy research. Is a person riding a bicycle doing a poor job of driving a car? No! He's doing something completely different. You don't condemn a bicyclist as a poor driver just because he isn't hitting the gas pedal to accelerate! Samarin and the other researchers were engaged in the classification of glossolalia. They were not testing a hypothesis that it's indistinguishable from free vocalization. They were classifying it and failed to detect any properties that distinguish it from (what has later been labeled) free vocalization. And that is a scientifically valid means of arriving at that conclusion. In all the research that we have reviewed on glossolalia, no scientist engaged in the valid exercise of classification has classified a sample as a known language. As of this writing, I am aware of a single anomalous finding -- still not classified as a language, but described as "language-like" (whatever that means) and producing phonemes not native to the speaker. I am eagerly searching for more information about that anomaly. Maybe it proves me wrong. Maybe it doesn't prove me wrong, but maybe it comes close enough to doing so for the purpose of a bunch of amateurs posting on a message board. I was relucant to share even this much information. I have seen the dishonest way research is handled on this thread when we know exactly who the researchers are and what their findings are. When we have limited information about the researchers and no access to the research itself, I can imagine that the speculation will run wild. But I am confident enough in my position that I will divulge as much as I have. I have given interested readers enough information to track this stuff down on their own. I welcome the challenge -- from honest debaters. Those who insist they have 11 fingers because they won't think hard enough to recognize the flaw in the chain of logic that led to that conclusion need not apply.

Robert Wuhl Bull Durham Susan Sarandon

Alas, I do not get to impose my own sentence. I stand by what I did yesterday. I admit that I should not have been the one to do it. I should have waited for another mod. But I don't think there's anyone here who can argue that the action itself was unjustified. This thread has become about one person's rejection of free vocalization as an innate human ability. I can understand that, because it is evident to me that if free vocalization exists as a natural explanation for what we all did as SIT, it poses a fatal threat to the notion that SIT is real. No actual evidence distinguishes free vocalization from SIT, so naturally, free vocalization cannot be allowed to be taken as a given. But it is a given. It is an innate human ability. That is not one person's opinion. It is an observable and repeatable fact. It is proved everytime another person does it. (So is blowing bubbles underwater, I confess. But the attempt to belittle free vocalization through the use of absurd analogies will no longer be entertained by me). I will no longer discuss it or defend it, nor will I respond to that poster unless at least one other person agrees that a point has been made that deserves an answer. If there's anyone reading this who does not believe that speaking in tongues can be faked without that fakery being spiritually energized, speak up and I will answer to the best of my ability. Otherwise, I will consider that discussion closed among those of us treating the subject matter honestly.

Socks, I answered you on the SIT thread. I do not know what the consequences of my action will be.

A made up term that describes a real thing is irrelevant. What matters is that free vocalization labels a real thing. It was not invented to account for SIT, mediums, and other supernatural phenomena. The activity precedes its application to the conversation we're having. You're belittling and making a mockery of an honest discussion and debate. You really need to stop. Look, you've convinced yourself that there's no such thing as free vocalization as an innate human ability. All the evidence lines up against you. I won't debate it further. And I won't debate you further. Sorry.

Explanation accepted. All I ask is that others do not expect me to believe the story based on the paucity of information.

In a misguided attempt to cool things down, I used mod capabilities to temporarily lock the thread. I chastised no one, reminded everyone of the rules, and waited for things to cool down. I forgot that I had already revealed that mod identity and, no way around it, got busted. This was no effort to silence dissent. It was intended to cool tempers, starting with my own. I know the rules. I will abide by them. I expect others to do the same and for other mods to police things as the need arises. I will accept any mod reprimand handed down by the powers that be. While I informed the other mods of what I was doing, I did not wait for permission to act. I have reported my behavior and am awaiting disciplinary action.

LOL Oops. Busted. Was just trying to cool things down. I ran it past the other mods and gave them veto power. I was trying to cool down and let the other mods review things. I am not above the rules. If i cross the line, i expect to be held accountable. But that's why i cannot reprimand anyone on that thread. my apologies. Just trying to cool things down. It is true that there were no complaints, though, and I deliberately waited for chockfull to post again before the lockdown. It was never going to last more than a couple of hours. The thread is reopened and the modcat5 post has been deleted. I think participants on the thread can vouch for me that I never edited or chastised anyone while wearing the modhat.

Post them. Anyone who hasn't seen either movie by now probably won't

Friday the 13th Warrior

But not one of those instances shows me misusing the term "proved" or "proven" and applying it to my opinion, which I DID state as fact, just as you have done with your opinions. So this is an example of us asking you for proof of claim A and unearthing proof of something other than claim A. You lie. How many more would you like me to document? Every time you accuse me of referring to my opinion as "proved," you lie. I have done no such thing. You have been on me for page after page after page, whining about my misuse of the word "proved," and you have not shown a SINGLE EXAMPLE of my misuse of that word or its application to my opinion. STOP LYING ABOUT ME!

The reason I misstepped on sample space, and I did, is that you misused it. There is no way to conduct the study you propose, because the question we are looking at does not lend itself to this approach. You admit as much in your next line. The first half of your sentence invalidates the second. It would not prove my point, and there is no confidence interval that would be mutually acceptable. The truth is that samples of SIT have been reviewed critically and have never been demonstrated to produce an actual language. The sample space is "rejects the contention that SIT IS free vocalization" or "fails to reject the contention that SIT IS free vocalization." Thus far, ALL STUDIED SAMPLES fit the latter category. None fit the former. Now, you dispute HOW and WHY there are no samples that reject the contention that SIT IS free vocalization. But you do so through utter speculation and a genuine appeal to ignorance: you believe the linguists who've studied this phenomenon are incompetent to identify languages. There's no evidence for it, but until it's disproved, you hold it as a truth until proven otherwise. You are free to do so, but that is a genn-you-whine fallacy at work, for all to see. So HAVE AT IT. I've already discredited your silly "free mouthvoiceization" red herring, but I'll gladly do it again. The difference between free vocalization and free mouthvoiceisation is that free vocalization actually describes an observed phenomenon that exists, can be produced at will, can be reproduced among those who are unfamiliar with it, and has been repeatedly demonstrated by children, actors, admitted fakers and self-deluded but well-meaning Christians who think they're producing Biblical SIT. Free mouthvoiceization is not only an invented term, but it describes an invented concept that does not exist, can't be reproduced, can't be taught, etc. Now, if you told me that free mouthvoiceization is the label you invented to describe the act of talking in your sleep (which really exists), I would be forced to conclude that free mouthvoiceization exists, but only as defined. Can anyone spot the logical fallacy chockfull employed here? It's called false equivalence: when a shared trait (in this case, the slapping of a label on something) is used to is used to equate those two things. But there are too many differences between free vocalization (established, real, PROVED) and free mouthvoiceization (unestablished, fictional by definition, unproved). So please, stop using a discredited example to prove there's no such thing as free vocalization. There is. You cannot escape it, and as long as you hold to this absurd notion, I will continue to address you as the dishonest debater you are continually showing yourself to be. You know, for someone who supposedly understands what sample space is, your misuse of it is kind of funny: Um, a sample space is not a defined group of people. It's a defined set of potential outcomes. BECAUSE I thought you were talking about groups of people, I assumed you were talking about sample size and not sample space. Had I realized you were talking about a potential set of outcomes (and you show no evidence of understanding that this is the meaning of the term), I would have recognized that you were using a term that had slipped from my memory. Once again, you have taken terms, misdefined them, and misapplied them to this conversation. THAT's why I keep threatening to "take my ball and go home." It's not because ALL the points you're making are bad. It's because when you DO have a good point, I have to sift through too much crap to get to it. I have no obligation to sift through your crap. You have lied about and misrepresented my posts, you have lied about and misrepresented the research we have been reviewing. You exalt a college paper uncritically and dismiss peer-reviewed research as shoddy. You demand background details of people who participated in legitimate research but accept, without criticism, published anecdotes of Catholics and Persians without a shred of evidence that the people described even exist, much less that they experienced what is claimed. I should say that I have every reason to believe that the information on the samples used in Samarin and Goodman and the others is actually documented. I hesitate to share it at this point for fear of what will happen when you get your dishonest and disingenuous hands on them. But hey, you already won this debate, so why are we even having this conversation? Anyone who doesn't believe free vocalization is an innate human ability is not being honest in this discussion. Period. I would just as soon argue over the existence of the moon. The innate, human ability to free vocalize is proved every time someone does it. And people do it all the time. Let me ask you a question: before gravity was labeled, did it exist?

Actually, this is REALLY easy. So, in order to reject the null hypothesis, I need to partition the potential outcomes according to its probabilities. Probability one: Glossolalia produces a human language, distinguishing it from free vocalization. Probability two: Glossolalia does NOT produce a human language, failing to distinguish it from free vocalization. Plenty of examples have already been tested. Glossolalia has failed to be distinguished from free vocalization. Your move. Oh, that's right, free vocalization doesn't exist. Because you said so. Really. There are no "Reject H0" samples in any of the studies we've observed. You're welcome. You HAVE shown multiple examples of me stating my opinion as fact (an allegation I never denied, by the way). You have NEVER shown an instance of me using "proved, proof" or any other variation of that word improperly. About that, you have lied and are continuing to lie. The only caveat: we disagree on whether free vocalization is proved. It is. You deny that. Your denial is without merit. But that's as close as you're going to get. In fact, from the beginning of this conversation, I have always conceded that my case can't be proved, so it would be quite silly for me to declare that it has been. It has not, nor can it be. It CAN be disproved... if you prove your big fat claim.

Not a single example you cited, not one, showed an improper use of the word proof. You lie.

With every post on this subject you are further broadcasting your ignorance of burden of proof. By suggesting that you have somehow done me a favor by absolving me of the burden of proof, you are saying exactly that. Nonetheless, I do recognize that there is more info to be gathered to answer some outstanding questions. I am not trying to back you into fallacies. I am attempting to draw you out of them. That is laughable. Show me ONE place where I've used the word "proven" or "proof" about something that wasn't proven or proved. One. Show me ONE.

I have to admit, you got me on Sample Space. It does exist. But, and this will SHOCK our readers, it's got nothing to do with what you describe. It's a term used in probability theory. You cannot "choose a sample space that is reflective of the overall population." It's got nothing to do with that. So again, you're throwing scientific terms around with no clue what they mean and how they apply to this discussion in a vain and transparent attempt to distract readers from the truth that the only way to end this discussion is to produce and identify the language, or find someone who can. FINALLY! Some skepticism from you! Would you believe me if I wrote it down in a book 40 years ago and decline to tell you who the participants were?

You STILL don't understand burden of proof. You think you did me a favor? Nope. Sorry. Your post was refuted before it was even written. I stand by my claim: the burden to prove anything is yours. You have waged a nonstop campaign of accusing me of using the word "proof" dishonestly. You have yet to show one instance of me doing so. And I agree: I am fully confident we will find the documentation of who Samarin's subjects were. A leap of faith, sure. But not n unreasonable one. We shall see...

I do believe your attacks on the research are without merit, and I've documented why and how. I do believe your proposed alternative is disingenuous and designed to fail, and I've outlined how and why. You ARE being dishonest in your rejection of free vocalization as an innate human ability, and I've documented how and why. So please, spare me the pity party of how my calling you out as a patently dishonest debater somehow amounts to an ad hominem attack. It is not. It is a fair reflection of how you've conducted yourself on this thread, and you're the only one who appears unable to see it.

Excuse me, but that "researcher" WAS a college student writing for class. He posted his resume. At the time that paper was written, he was an undergrad with a minor in religious philosophy. I wasn't namecalling or pulling an accusation out of a hat. I documented my claim. He also pulled his paper off the web. It wasn't research published in a peer reviewed journal or even in a respected theological publication. If any paper we've reviewed can be labeled "shoddy," that was it. So please stop acting like this was some unwarranted attack on his character to call him a college student when it was a statement of verified fact.

It is not a moot point. It's being treated as one because you don't know how to apply it in this case.

Sorry to be a pain in the neck, but I'm catching hell for failing to fall prostrate before this story, so it's in my best interest to at least try to nail down exactly what the story is. You know, to the best of your recollection. And we KNOW the tongues speaker didn't speak Chinese, right? Because he... said so? No, that's gullible. You have to know the guy. I mean, at the time. You knew his educational background, knew he never studied in college or anywhere else... Wait, how'd these folks end up in the same fellowship meeting, anyway? Just curious. If these questions seem unfair, please understand, they are more fair than the expectation that I believe this story without asking them. Socks hasn't asked me to believe this story. I'd LOVE answers, but he is under no obligation to provide them. But without the answers, I am under no obligation to believe the story. Agreed?

Yes, last time it was A Group of Asians (Chinese was implied by the rest of the account). Were there other Asians there? Were they Chinese? Did they understand too? Or was it just the couple? Why single out the couple if all the Asians understood? Why mention the other Asians if only the couple understood? And last time, we were a little vague on the native language issue. It was: "The native language of the group. It wasn't a completely modern dialect of Chinese, but it was the dialect spoken by these people's family elders, older generation. I guess they said there were a few words that were slightly different that identified it that way to them.” So wait, was it their language that they recognized and could confirm the translation? Or did it sound like the language used by their parents and grandparents that they knew if they heard it, but could not translate? And do we still not know who any of these people are? Input! Input!

Wait, it was a Chinese couple now? I don't recall it being a couple before. More input!