Raf

Isolation is a powerful weapon for a cult. Blaming the people we isolated ourselves from misses the point.

Two Jedi discover a promising lad on a remote planet and decide he should be trained in the art of hustling and escaping from the urban ghetto of Watts, California.

Always an excuse as to why a language won't be found or hasn't been found. Never an expectation that it will be. That's not faith. That's wishful thinking.

Just going to say a couple of things about accents. The term, as used by Samarin, is not the same as it is used by Chockfull in extrapolating yet another excuse as to why the people on earth best suited to detect human languages in glossolalia have failed to do so. It's not because of accents botching the sounds. Samarin defines "accent" (he puts the term in quotes, which should be a signal to us that he's using a definition that's not the common one) specifically in terms of the failure of the glossolalist to produce foreign phonemes. He cited this as the giveaway that the English speaking glossolalist produces phonemes that are "entirely typical" of the English language. It should be noted that in the anecdotes that I am supposed to accept uncritically, with no corroborating evidence and no objective determination that the participants did what was claimed and the observers really heard what they claimed to, those anecdotes typically (though not always) feature a level of amazement at the perfection of the glossa. The speaker always sounds like a native, like someone with a college-level grasp of the language. This high quality of glossa appears to vanish whenever a linguist is looking at it. Suddenly, we're supposed to believe the quality is so lousy that even though a language is there, it's undetectable. Nonsense. Either the spirit gives the utterance or he/it doesn't. A SITter producing an obscure Chinese dialect isn't going to do it without producing foreign phonemes, no matter how bad his "accent" is. It's a red herring and an excuse, and it doesn't wash. It just amazes me that the shoddiness of his research is so heavily criticized, yet the incredible level of detail he goes into is cut up, yanked from its context, picked apart to the point that amateurs who have no idea what we're talking about think we can make better observations and analyses than those who've studied this field for more than a couple of hours reading an Internet thread. Phonemic inventory reveals glossolalia to be highly dependent on the native language of the speaker. There are exceptions, and those exceptions are easily traceable to the speaker's limited exposure to other languages. Everything I have to add has already been said.

And that was my first twig meeting. I was the friend he invited along.

For the sake of argument, I am compelled to concede that anything not excluded by scripture is permissible as a possibility. Poythress accepts the possibility of a kind of code that might be undetectable by linguistics but could still count as language. I reject that, and Chockfull has been kind enough not to argue the point. The very least I can do is not argue the point that extinct languages are a possibility, especially considering the Bible does not exclude the possibility.

As far as doctored verses go, the easiest place to start is the conclusion of Mark. The evidence for its authenticity is flimsy as all get out, and the "snake handling" verse is a lot easier to explain when you realize it's got as much right to be in the Bible as the story of Agamemnon's revenge against Perseus.

Really, I don't care. Give the answer!

Yeah, but I don't care. Go for it.

Gonna have to side with Chockfull here. He said includes, not includes ONLY. It could be extinct languages. It could be current languages. A convenient stretch would be that it includes future languages. Woohoo! No one can prove or disprove THAT. Am I the only one who's noticed that the general expectation of those who practice SIT is that a language will NOT be found, followed by a list of excuses as to why? I mean, right away, it's just assumed the linguists will be unable, or God will not participate, or the language will be obscure, or extinct, or heavenly. Or the dragon's fire is non thermal, so measuring the temperature won't reveal its presence. And throwing water or paint on it won't work because it's not corporeal. It won't leave footprints. Always an excuse as to why the promised result won't be found. Never a hint of expectation that it will be.

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?