ANTHROPOLOGY 281-1005 Mid Term Exam Notes #002-- NSL, POTO AND CABENGO,

ANTH 281--1005//Dr. J Ferguson//University of Nevada, Reno, Spring 2018




Signs of the Times and Invented Language--




     Nicaragua, according to some reports, is the second poorest country in Central America behind Haiti. The education system is far below minimum standards set forth by various institutions monitoring the development of regional learning. Many students drop out of school because it's "boring" and they can't make any money, opting for menial low paying jobs in order to support their families and "buy new clothes."


     If the overall educational system in Nicaragua, where kids drop out before the eighth grade, is in such a shambles, why is there such great emphasis on illustrating the particular merit of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)? Affecting only an extremely small segment of the population, hearing impaired kids, where hundreds of thousands more have little or no interest in education, what significance does NSL play? Very little.


     A close friend of mine, Donaldo Gomez, built a hotel on the Pacific Coast in a small beach village an hour's drive from the capital of Managua. He paid his workers eight dollars an hour, when they complained, he replied,


"What are you complaining about, I'm paying you eight dollars a day."


     Such is the nature of education and the economy in Nicaragua with sign language having little or no bearing on the future of the communist dictatorship, just a passing interest to be used as a proletarian classroom YouTube example for linguistic anthropology studies and a long answer question on a mid term exam.




                                    ***
While on the subject of invented language, the following proves to be a far more interesting case, Poto and Cabengo:


(Decoded from Detroit Free Press, (22 May 1981) unedited--


Twins' unique language talks about their isolation

By DIANE HAITHMAN ;roe Press Stott Writer Poto and Cabengo's real names are Virginia and Grace Kennedy. They were six years old at the time film director Jean-Pierre Gorin captured a brief por-tion of their lives on film. This Friday's Detroit Film Theatre presentation is Gordin's peculiar and lo-vely documentary about how Ginny and Grade, believed to be slightly retarded since birth. and their lower middle-in-come San Diego family become short-lived celebrities when the girls' teachers discover that they have invented a secret language all their own. Our first view of Grace and Ginny, the mischievous twins, is as two children playing with clay, normal except for the fact that they are babbling rapidly in a logical-sounding gibberish. We are told the girls have spoken nothing but this peculiar tongue for years. Yet they seem quite happy.


THE SPEECH EXPERTS approach the phenomenon cautiously — one states that the girls, a product of one German and one American parent who each speak a different ungrammatical brand of Eng-lish, could simply be suffering from this defective verbal environment. Or the girls could simply be retarded, as their odd, hyperactive manner suggests. Once the newspapers get hold of the story, however, the girls become freaks, chattering, as one newspaper puts it, in Martian. The headlines, which slowly grow smaller and smaller as the press loses interest In the story, are inter-spersed throughout the film.

POTO AND CABENGO Detroit Film Theatre U.SA, 1919 A documentary film directed and narrated by lan•Pierre Gain. Camera work by Les Blank, SOund by Maureen Gosling. editing, tilt and animation by Greg Durbin. Running tiny I hour 7 min 7 and 110 o m Detroit Institute of Arts Auditorium. 5200 Woodward PARENTS GUIDE: no ouottohable torrent

Thus "Poto and Cabengo" is not really a story about media hype. As soon as it is discovered that the girls have actually distorted English and German words, rather than inventing their own lan-guage, the story Is dropped. A film com-pany which planned to make a movie on the girls cancels out. GORIN'S APPROACH says more about the desperation of this isolated, bigoted family where each member speaks a language outside the American mainstream of speech and whose only hope for financial security is to cash in on the problems of these two children. Gorin does not make the same judg-mental statements about the girls de-prived background as do the speech therapists — he simply gapes at it. The camera lingers on the fake wood panel-ing, the huge old television set that domi-nates the living room, the used Cadillac in their small garage. Gorin feels especially for the girls' alienation, since he, too, is separated from the typical American by his French accent. Gorin, very much a part of the film as Its narrator, sees the girls as 1980s Katzenjammer Kids, possessing both the confusion and wisdom that comes of approaching American language and cul-ture from the outside.

 A follow-up from Wikipedia on the twins' status:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poto_and_Cabengo


A follow-up in 2007 revealed that Virginia works on an assembly line in a supervised job training center, while Grace mops floors at a fast-food restaurant.^[3]

ANTHROPOLOGY 281-1005--Mid-term Exam Notes-- IN TONGUES, RELATIVELY SPEAKING.

ANTH 281-1005//Dr J Ferguson//University of Nevada, Reno//Spring 2018  15M18
     Categorically speaking, the analysis of language, in a limited and antiseptic environment such as an experiment involving observer and subject, will almost always yield results expected, from inductive or deductive calculations, by the observer. It is the inherent nature of "ethnocentrism," a word originally used by Ludwig Gumplowicz in the 19th century to justify racial and class discord as a cause for war in order for a culture to progress.
     Juxtaposing the above on to the field of anthropological linguistics, it is no wonder that results are speaking, not necessarily in tongues, but in categories. Categories of syntax, grammar, phonemes, morphemes and the like. When it wasn't enough to break down language into its components, the tendency then existed to do what every other field of scientific endeavor did in the last century, make it relative. Thus, the Edward Sapir-Benjamin Whorf theory. But like every other attempt to connect process (thought) with procedure (speaking), there would also be refutation. But in order to first do this, what little evidence exists to define a culture in terms of its language, there needed to be yet another division, hence, the "soft" and "hard" interpretations of Roger Brown,  where that dialectic could just as easily be replaced by ching and chung. 
     There seems to be little emphasis on rather obvious components of the thinking-speaking-real world chain missing here; not so much in a strict Pavlovian take on the process, but from a Darwininian  vis-a-vis BF Skinner approach.  Without going into the details of the operant reaction experiments, it will suffice to say that conditioned response, behavior reinforcement and the environment play significant roles in whether there is any kind of influence on the process chain that constitutes a linguistic theory, whether relative of universal. To what degree conclusions can be drawn from over-simplistic experiments involving color terminology or spatial representations in various cultures might explain why the theories do not hold up to criticism.
     To leave it on a metaphorical note, "the proof is in the pudding."

ENG-ANTH 281-1005--"An Endless War"--NY Times (02/17/18)--REVERSE OUTLINE, QUALLAM-3D

TO ALPHA 3212  FROM RECON-PRESSE-USA SUBJ AFTER ACTION W/MAPS

Following is the Reverse outline from the NY Times article--
University of Nevada, Reno
Spring 2018  13M18
James Langelle

"An Endless War,"  NYT (02/19/18)--Reverse Outline

1.) Introduction to the ambush on October 04, 2017 just below the Mali border in Niger that claimed the lives of 4 American soldiers.
2.) Outcome of the firefight, comparison to "Blackhawk Down" (1993, Somalia), and reaction back home of President Trump's remarks.
3.) A hastily arranged plan that led to the soldiers being caught out in the open just a few hundred yards south of Tongo Tongo village.
4.) Logistics and weapons inventory.
5.)  The debate in Congress on the so-called "war on terror."
6.) The Pentagon report is in progress, and currently over 1000 pages long. Sen. Graham remark, ignorance over troop count in Niger.
7.)  The rest of the senators with the "I know nothing " line aka Sgt. Schultz, "Hogan's Heroes."
8.) Sgt. Wright background notes.
9.) Sgt. Wright background notes.
10.) War authorization measure.
11.)  Rep B Lee (D-CA)- 9/11 AUMF vote.
12.) AUMF repeal attempt by Rep. Lee killed in House, w/ref to runup to ambush time frame.
13.)  Obama uses 1973 War Powers Act to justify Niger troop deployment.
14.) Post-ambush debate in Congress with focus on 2001 AUMF.
15.) Sgt. Black bio
16.) Sgt. Black bio, continued.
17.) Sgt. Black bio, continued.
18.)  Sgt. Black bio, continued.
19.)  Background on US involvement in Africa, 1998, Tanzania and Kenya bombings and emergence of Osama bin Laden.
20.) French intervention in Mali, 2013.
21.) Obama steps in with a plan for West Africa.
22.) President Trump and the current escalation of terror attacks by African militants.
23.) Niger escalation and the risk posed by American forces in the bush.
24.) The obfuscation from command over the role of the patrol in the bush.
25.) "Naylor Road", code name for the cattle-herder turned radical as the objective of the patrol; relation to American aid worker kidnapping. Alert sounded by electronic signal from the cattle-herder's electronic device.
26.) Heli-assault mission "Obsidian Nomad" formulated using a variety of counterterror components. Command decisions may have muddled the execution of the mission.
27.) Ground component, the ill-fated patrol, was already in place.
28.) Weapons inventory of the patrol OD-Alpha 3212; patrol leaves Quallam base at 0600, Oct. 03. Following routine mission, patrol is diverted to assist the heli-assault team.
29.) Heli-assault mission scrubbed, leaving Alpha-3212 open in the field with no air cover. The team was ordered to recon the cattle-herder's last known location.
30.) Patrol recons extremely dangerous neighborhood, where dozens of attacks had already been recorded.
31.) Air-support stands down, the team beds down and continues early on the morning of Oct. 04., eventually arriving at Tongo Tongo.
32.)  A-3212 stops for water in the village, and appear to be delayed for rather suspect reasons.
33.) 1130 hours, 500 yards south of the village, the firefight erupts with the unit taking small arms fire from a treeline to the north. There is a comm breakdown which prevent air-support from the French in Mali.
34.) Air support does arrive and med-evacs are lifted out of an LZ, (possibly the location of the red smoke in the video.) There is a very big intel gap here over whether those killed in the ambush were deserted by the others.
35.)  Trump remark on Sgt. Johnson, "knew what he signed up for."
36.) Sgt. (La David) Johnson bio.
37.) Body-camera recordings reviewed.
38.) More body-camera review.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/17/world/africa/niger-ambush-american-soldiers.html?mtrref=www.google.com

#28)--"patrol leaves Quallam base at 0600"

Below 3D sims of "Quallam base"--

Yet another reminder of the "war on terror"..