Lost in Translation

Not to dismiss the entire field of linguistics, but this week's readings made me ponder the value of studying multiple languages and whether generalizations can be in any way significant. Atkins and Levin’s entire paper is on the minute semantic differences of synonyms, and even they conclude that such a priori analysis is illogical for a dictionary for common use. Haspelmath and Slobin give a multitude of examples of how morphemes, intonation, vowel length, gestures, expressions, culture, and more all combine in communicating meaning within a language. Although descriptions of “morpheme” or “allophone” may be applied within each language, they refer to drastically different lengths and types of sounds that may be inserted as affixes in a wide variety of places. Should we even be using the same categories when comparing S- and V-languages, if there are so many nuances in how verbs are treated?

If anything, it seems that having the field of linguistics be conducted so often in English might bias analysis to interpret differences in languages in a way that makes sense compared to English. In anthropology, post-modernism stipulates that an anthropologist should really own study her own culture, because she will bring too many of her own biases and perspectives into interpreting a different culture. I wonder if the same thing should apply for linguists. I recognize that languages are dying at a horrifying rate, and the linguists who are currently trained need to record languages as fast as possible, but I wonder what is being lost in translation. If there are so many fundamental differences between languages, maybe we should be training native speakers of a language to be linguists themselves and perform their own analysis on their language, rather than translating everything into English first. Who knows what nuances are being lost, as might happen if a Martian came to learn English and treated shake, quake, and quiver interchangeably.

I suppose that the existence of such incredibly different systems of modifying words and sentence structure to achieve the intended meaning indicates that the human brain is highly flexible and able to process any of these systems. However, phonetically speaking, I know that humans can lose the ability to differentiate between particular phonemes, such as Japanese babies not reacting the a change between /l/ and /r/ sounds after a critical age. Thus I wonder if the same hold true for syntax, that there is a critical period after which humans no longer are able to be fluent in another language and truly grasp all the connotations of words, as well as fluently use the structure.