I don't know that much about linguistics or how the brain works, but it's true that no human language/society works this way, and it may be impossible given our way of understanding language. Your points seem pretty sound to me.
For the sake of argument, I'll say that I can imagine people's minds working in such a way that they didn't think to rearrange the small units of language (the verbs and nouns, etc.) into freestanding sentences that would explain things. In other words, I can imagine people having a conception of "walls" that attaches to the word "walls" and of "fell" that attaches to the word "fell" etc., but no habit (and maybe no possibility) of using those independent of some piece of cultural knowledge. Sort of like having numbers as adjectives to describe things (these sheep are fluffy, large, and two, these bowls of water are shallow, cool, and two) but not having a concept of numbers as freestanding abstractions. In the episode, "Shaka, when the walls fell" is used in instances of setback and defeat, and I imagine if people used it around you as a small child every time those instances arose, you'd get the meaning. If there are other phrases with Shaka in them, you might get a sense of Shaka's overall story.
But yeah: it's hard to imagine how you'd get new information into the system--how would "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" be conveyed to the rest of the society, who weren't there? And, as you suggest, that retroactively makes one wonder how the initial phrases could ever have gotten established.
I guess the best I can think is that you'd have a society in which straight talking, without references, is very weak and underdeveloped, and a very strong preference for talking in references. But that's still a step back from talking entirely in references.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2016-12-11 01:05 pm (UTC)For the sake of argument, I'll say that I can imagine people's minds working in such a way that they didn't think to rearrange the small units of language (the verbs and nouns, etc.) into freestanding sentences that would explain things. In other words, I can imagine people having a conception of "walls" that attaches to the word "walls" and of "fell" that attaches to the word "fell" etc., but no habit (and maybe no possibility) of using those independent of some piece of cultural knowledge. Sort of like having numbers as adjectives to describe things (these sheep are fluffy, large, and two, these bowls of water are shallow, cool, and two) but not having a concept of numbers as freestanding abstractions. In the episode, "Shaka, when the walls fell" is used in instances of setback and defeat, and I imagine if people used it around you as a small child every time those instances arose, you'd get the meaning. If there are other phrases with Shaka in them, you might get a sense of Shaka's overall story.
But yeah: it's hard to imagine how you'd get new information into the system--how would "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel" be conveyed to the rest of the society, who weren't there? And, as you suggest, that retroactively makes one wonder how the initial phrases could ever have gotten established.
I guess the best I can think is that you'd have a society in which straight talking, without references, is very weak and underdeveloped, and a very strong preference for talking in references. But that's still a step back from talking entirely in references.