007_Start making sense
When you last saw me, I was a baby sitting on your hip (#006). There, I was considering the epistemology of language acquisition. Based on empirical evidence, I was testing a bold hypothesis: “Oo”.
Let’s return to that scene and see it from my viewpoint as a baby.
“Oo” was my attempt to mimic a sound that you (and others) had modelled for me. Without the model, there would have been no “oo”.
Grown-ups make the strangest noises! I’ve been sitting on your hip for months listening to you babble away, and frankly it’s been difficult to work out what to attend to and what to ignore. But that “pointing” thing you do with your finger has definitely been making me think.
I said I’d had a chance to “reflect” on one or two things (#006). Well, this mental reflection was made possible by my mind’s eye, which, at my current stage of development as a baby is just beginning to bring into focus items in memory. In fact, it’s becoming my magic rear-view mirror. Why magic? Because the mirror of memory can do more than just show me images. Among its various amazing features, it can also play back sounds.
A parent is the best personal mobility solution and service provider. I can’t speak highly enough of you. You keep me fed, wipe my bottom, show me the world. Thank you for doing all those things. It’s hardly surprising that I love you. And loving you means that I pay attention to you. I’m happy when you do that pointing thing. I’m happy when you make one of your weird grown-up noises. You seem to be making a special effort for me.
Generally speaking (not that I can do much speaking of any kind), I don’t have a clue what’s going on, and you really had this bambino bamboozled with that fancy combination of looking at me, pointing at something else, and producing a noise at the same time. But I’ve finally cracked the code: That shiny bright white disc IS the noise! It IS “oo”!
I probably could have tried producing the sound a bit earlier, but baby’s first epistemological hypothesis had two parts, and I required your attention on me in order to support or refute both parts.
I was pretty confident I could get your attention. After all, you already pay a lot of attention to me. It’s wonderful when you do, but I can’t tell you how upsetting it is when you don’t. Specifically because I lack the ability just yet to tell you how upsetting it is when you don’t pay attention to me, I have no choice but to cry and cry. But one pattern I’ve started to notice is that when I do new stuff, it’s happy time and you pay me a lot of attention.
I had a vague idea that this “oo” thing would be “new stuff!” writ large. But first I wanted to test out my rear-view mirror. And as soon as I bobbled my head to look at “oo”... Bam! Attention—off the charts. You seemed over the oo, in fact.
That gave me the confidence to test the second part of my hypothesis: The mission now was to say “oo” when I was actually looking at “oo”, and when you were there to support or refute my hypothesis that “oo” was in fact an appropriate thing to say when looking at the shiny bright white disc in the night sky.
Bingo! And a big bonus! My “oo” prompted you not only to shower me with heavy-duty positive attention, but also to model the sound really clearly, several times! A cycle of reinforcement was initiated, thanks to which I’ve started to detect some additional noises. It seems it’s not just “oo”. “Moo”, maybe? I need to work on this. But it’ll be fun to have more attention lavished on me as I gradually perfect the correspondence between my sounds and yours.
Now back to the grown-up me. Shall we Canjeez?
The Canjeez for sound is 音. This is a two-bit glyph, with a top bit and a bottom bit. Both bits are Canjeez in their own right. The top bit is 立, which is stand. The bottom bit is 日, which is day or sun.
What, you may think, does that have to do with “sound”? If a glyph like 音 has no semantic rhyme or reason, how can we hope to remember it? Well, one way is to tell a story about it. Here’s a story you can inscribe in memory about the composition of 音: “Stand on the sun and you’ll make a sound!” The story can be anything you like, whatever helps you to remember how the Canjeez is composed.
As a matter of fact, though, 音 was originally written in a different way and seems to have been associated with speech. In ancient China, this character was part of a trio of glyphs that denoted different types of sound. As always there’s scholarly discussion about what was actually going on, so let’s talk about the three glyphs as Canjeez. Canjeez #1 is 聲, a noise that an animal is aware of, Canjeez #2 is 音, a sound that a human can discern, and Canjeez #3 is 樂, music, a sound that only the Superior Person truly appreciates. What baby is attending to is Canjeez #2: 音.
Yes, I’m one discerning baby. And what you say is music to my ears because finally everything is starting to make sense. I’m loving what I’m hearing, and 心 heart bound to 音 sound makes 意: mind. Thanks to you, my mind is awakening. My mind’s eye is opening. For one of the first times in my life, I have become consciously mindful of something in the world around me: the thing I call “oo”.
Baby me loves positive attention, and so I want to keep that new “oo” awareness in mind. This next step requires 憶 memory: 心 heart bound to 意 mind.
With the image and sound inscribed in memory, I’ll be able to start reproducing the sound at appropriate moments by comparing what’s going on in the world “out there” with what I can see and hear in my magic rear-view mirror.
So there we have it. Three tools that are keys to becoming a member of a language community: sound (standing for sensory input), mind (making sense of sensory input), and memory (storing sense for later use).
Sound, mind, and memory are the wellspring of the words that enable all of us to communicate about anything, and to change anything.
“Oo,” I hope you’re saying, as you begin to see that these three squiggles from ancient China capture the essence of human civilization.
But quite soon after that, you may also be saying: “Wait. That bit on the left of 憶 doesn't look like 心.”
Hold that in 憶 memory. I will explain in a post that’s coming soon.
Land of the Rising Sun
One of the Canjeez I looked at this time was 音, which includes 日 as its lower bit. You may remember that you saw 日 day/sun a couple of times in a previous post (#004). In one instance it was the first of two characters. In that particular context the second glyph of the two, 本, denoted root. Glom those glyphs and you get 日本 Japan (sun-root).