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Re: [xmca] Vygotsky and Saussure



David,

It's a very interesting manuscript, for sure.

At the top of page 272 LSV writes that "mastering the structure of the relation of the phoneme and the phone in one particular case, the child masters the structure as a whole." Leaving aside the claim made here, the use of both 'phoneme' and 'phone' here suggests that two distinct terms were used in the Russian, though how consistently they were translated I can only guess.
A phone is a sound considered outside language, right? An [x] rather  
than an /x/. In a previous life (well, a previous country) I took an  
extension course in phonetics. I got the lowest passing grade and I  
(like to) think that my poor performance was due to my skepticism over  
the IPA. It's a way to describe phones, if I remember correctly:  
recognizing and characterizing sounds as they are produced without  
reference to any specific language's phonemic system. (Hence the  
'I'nternational.)
But how is this possible? If I lost the ability at around 8 months of  
age to make or recognize phonemic distinctions that are irrelevant to  
my native language, how on earth can I regain that ability in a  
university extension course?
(That's a largely rhetorical question.. But feel free to answer it if  
you wish.)
Martin

On Jul 28, 2009, at 6:37 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

Martin,

Both Andy and I are very interested in Volume Five, the unfinished manuscript on Child Development in the Collected Works.
On pp. 272-273 LSV talks about "phones" instead of "phonemes". I  
think this is a correct translation, and "phonemes" is an incorrect  
one. I don't have the Russian original, though, so I can't be sure.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Tue, 7/28/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Vygotsky and Saussure
To: ablunden@mira.net, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu >
Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 12:03 PM


Andy,

In Problems of Child Development LSV writes that language shatters the unity of infant and world. Your examples of the painter and gymnast help us recognize that this rupture cannot be complete or final. Both are kinds of work in which successful practice depends on an embodied embeddedness in concrete reality.
But at the same time I think LSV is right to write of rupture, and  
of the importance of language. First, he's right to insist that the  
child is born embedded, and so he rejects the built-in mind/world  
dualism that is presupposed by cognitive science. But, second, he's  
right to say that in development this immediacy is disrupted so that  
a mind is formed. The preschool age child is a dynamic part of their  
situation and responds without pause to its demands. The school age  
child, he writes, has lost this spontaneity. Language changes the  
child's relationship to the world in large part by picking out  
aspects of the situation as a distinct (kind of) 'thing.' It comes  
'between' person and world, is an important part of the child's  
differentiation from other people, and soon will be the basis for a  
division between 'inner' and 'outer' aspects of the child's  
personality, dividing her from herself.
A good gymnast or painter finds ways to suspend or overcome or  
forget these divisions. But equally an adult without language would  
not be able to be a painter or gymnast, even if they could put paint  
on canvas or spin on a beam, because 'painter' and 'gymnast' are  
positions in a social reality which someone without language would  
be unable to adopt.
still dancing

Martin

On Jul 27, 2009, at 11:23 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:

Martin,
We've been round this mulberry bush before, so I suspect David might agree with you, but I differ.
As I recall, LSV claims that word-meaning is the unit of analaysis  
for intelligent speech and therefore the "microcosm" of  
consciousness.
So LSV agreed with Marx, as do I, that practice, or artefact  
mediated action is the unit of analysis of consciousness.
all linguists of course disagree. But I wonder if a painter would  
agree, or a gymnast?
Andy

Martin Packer wrote:
David, ...
meaningful-sound is a concrete phenomenon, located in place and time. And he promises that we will thereby find the unity of thinking and speech, of generalization and social interaction, of thinking and communication, of intellect and affect. In short, of consciousness.
No? Yes?
Martin
On Jul 25, 2009, at 3:25 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
Martin:

Yes, definitely! If you read pp. 49-50 in the Minick translation of Thinking and Speech, we get Vygotsky's remarks on Saussure's phonology in pure form. Of course, he rejects (again and again) the Saussurean view of semantics; it's nothing but associationism. But since he rejects associationism on the basis of its arbitrariness, its lack of an intelligent link, and its lack of system, he has to reject Saussurean phonemes too, no?
No! As you say, there are two points here for Vygotsky to  
appropriate. The first is that the phoneme is part of a gestalt,  
specifically, a contrast with some other word (e.g. "back" and  
"bag"). But the second is that that gestalt is defined by MEANING  
and not by sound.
Here is where Vygosky really parts company, not only with  
Saussure and structuralism but also with Gestaltism. For  
Saussure, the relationship between phoneme and meaning is  
entirely arbitrary; but for Vygotsky it is fully determined by  
the social situation of development.
For Gestaltism, the structural relationship is not unique to  
language; it's shared with perception. But for Vygotsky the  
consciousness that is created by thought is never reducible to  
the consciousness that is created by perception.
The question I have is what Saussure would have made of all this.  
Saussure was actually quite skeptical about his own system; he  
had good reason to instruct his wife and students not to publish  
any of his work. And as the article Mike sent around (on the  
Mandelshtam poem) makes clear, he had big big problems with  
precisely the concepts at issue: the arbitrariness and linearity  
of language.
Notice that Vygotsky doesn't really use the word "phonetic" very  
much. The word which is usually translated as "phonetic" is  
actually "phasal". But in the example Vygotsky gives about the  
psychological vs. grammatical predicate/subject, where he talks  
about psychological/grammatical gender, and number, and even  
tense, it is very clear that for Vygotsky ALL the linear aspects  
of language, the aspects which (unlike thought) include TIME in  
their compositionality, are to be considered "phasal", not just  
phonetics.
David Kellogg
Seoul National University of Education

--- On Fri, 7/24/09, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:


From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
Subject: Re: [xmca] Intensions in context and speech complexity ; From 2-?
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Friday, July 24, 2009, 8:03 AM



On Jul 23, 2009, at 2:46 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

I think Vygotsky actually finds the single kernel of truth in Saussure's course when he argues that a science of phonetics needs to be founded on MEANING MAKING and not on the physical description of noises people make with their mouths. However, his ability to find this kernel in a mountain of structuralist chaff should not deceive you; he is no uncritical consumer of Saussureanism.
David,

Coincidentally I was reading yesterday the section in Problems of Child Psychology (vol 5 of the Collected Works) where Vygotsky again makes this point. It is evidently Saussurian linguistics that V is enthusiastic about: he refers to it as phonology and contrasts it with an older phonetics which focused solely on articulatory definitions. Phonology has the advantage of seeing the sounds of language as a system, and so the child never learns a single sound in isolation but always one sound against the background of the others. V points out that this is a basic law of perception: figure/ground, and also that the ground in the case of oral language is provided by the speech of adults (so the 'ideal' endpoint of development is present and available from the start, as emphasized in the passage that Lois quoted a few days ago).
V is critical once again of analyses that divide a phenomenon  
into elements and in doing so lose the properties of the whole.  
Phonology, he says, has the advantage that in studying the sounds  
of a language as a system it doesn't divide it into separate  
elements, nor does it lose the central property of language,  
namely that it has meaning. V adds that sounds always have  
meaning: "the phoneme," he writes "is not just a sound, it is a  
sound that has meaning, a sound that has not lost meaning, a  
certain unit that has a primary property to a minimal degree,  
which belongs to speech as a whole" (271).
V's analysis makes a good deal of sense to me. But my own limited  
knowledge of Saussure - guided in part by Roy Harris' writing -  
has indeed included the dogma that the sound level of language  
carries no meaning. You are saying, I think, that V has a  
reasonable reading of Saussure, if not the canonical one. Can you  
say more about this way of reading Saussure? V seems to be  
suggesting that the child does not learn first sounds, then  
words, but always acquires the sounds of language in the context  
of the use of words in communicative settings, and this has the  
consequece that the sounds would be aquired as aspects of a  
meaningful unit. Am I on the right track here?
Martin_______________________________________________
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Martin Packer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
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Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 15282
(412) 396-4852
www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/
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Martin Packer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychology Department
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 15282
(412) 396-4852

www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/

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_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
Martin Packer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Psychology Department
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA 15282
(412) 396-4852

www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/

_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca