The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

I think this is the main thing I want to actually quote and answer:

But now *I* must ask, why are we having this discussion?  It is obvious now that you don't care any more for the Chinese Origin Theory, for the Dictation Scenario, or or for the claim that the SPS is the SBJ. In fact it seems you no longer care about the Voynich manuscript at all.  The discussion has now derailed to the socioliguistic  situation in China and its political correctness and implications. 

I am working on a more detailed response to your conception of Chinese and what it has to do with the identification you have made

In fairness, I do not understand why we are having this conversation either, that is why I am asking you about that post. I am not being difficult or rhetorical when I say that I do not understand why you are asking me to justify the relevance of something you wrote. Presumably, based on how it is structured, it has something to do with my contention that Chinese people write rather than drawing pictures. It never concludes by saying that Chinese people do read, or why picture drawing should count as reading. So I am just as lost as you, and I was hoping you might provide an explanation for why you wrote the things you did and how they relate to both the semantic notion of "meaning" and the other quotes I pulled. I have not received a defintion of "meaning" that works for both positions, nor have you explained why you are putting forth both radical skepticism about what anyone understands, but also telling me that all speakers from a group of unrelated languages have the same mental geography.

Obviously I think these are in logical opposition or I would not have set them up as a contradiction you need to account for. That said, I am perfectly comfortable with the resolution being a synthesis position or some other third way. But if you want me to understand how these ideas coexist, you must write down an accounting of that coexistence. I quoted you because I read your posts, so writing the same thing slightly reworded with lots of bold emphasis will not resolve the contradiction I have identified. If I could do it on my own, I would not have asked about the seemingly contradictory posts, I would just put that resolution into the write-up.

This sort of thing happened with my question about recovering the words from writing. I asked if the words can be recovered. You treated me to a long digression about differences in phonology. Formally, you never concluded if the words could be recovered or not. I inferred---wrongly---that this was because what was being recovered was different only up to phonology. You then did not take the opportunity after seeing that I drew the wrong conclusion to tell me what the right conclusion to draw from that analysis would be.

I am at a bit of a juncture here. I have asked for clarification about how this fits together now several times. You know, or have had ample opportunity to ask, what I'm trying to get you to explain. You are resorting to strawmanning my other positions and painting me as unreasonable rather than write a conclusion to your points. I will be happy to characterize our interaction that way in my write-up---that is much easier than figuring out how this abstruse point about personal meaning is relevant. That said, if you think it is, and you would like to be the one to set explicit definitions and draw conclusions about your points, please do so