@ SyroMalankara –
Ah, yeah, I wasn’t thinking of that, i.e. the use of Syriac. Ecclesiastical diglossia does exist today, but I don’t think it’s quite as “strict” as it was in Paul’s time.
Some examples other than what you referenced – Classical Arabic is the liturgical language of Islam, but I don’t believe the diglossia is quite as strict – this is one of the reasons you’ll see say, someone from Indonesia reciting the Quran in Classical Arabic rather than Indonesian, or Javanese, or any other language indigenous to Indonesia. Avestan as the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism (though I’m not sure if this is simply the case of Avestan – Old Persian being a liturgical language or the ONLY language acceptable for prayer, etc.).
Boy, examples of some universal concepts of language – this is a bit tough as I want to include those of human language.
Here’s a really quick response -
Essentially the main universal concept is one I’ve already mentioned - language conveys a thought/concept from one ‘speaker’ to another. Language is a means by which that thought/concept is conveyed. I have ‘speaker’ in quotes as the language does not need to be specifically spoken. I think these are the two major ones – language is the means by which a thought/concept is conveyed to another.
Since Christian glossolalia is a spoken language only – by that I mean that there is no written glossolalia. Yes, you can record it and transcribe it, but the speaker can’t write glossolalia instead of speaking it (nor can they repeat a glossic utterance they just spoke), I have to go by some universals of spoken language and human language in general.
To cover a few – and in no particular order….
Every language has structure: it contains sounds which are strung together to create “words”. These words in a given language must be put together in such a way that all speakers agree upon this order so that concepts can be conveyed. English generally agrees that the subject comes first, then an action word (verb), and then an (optional) object. In other languages, this order may be totally different, and in yet other languages, this order may be quite free (usually the amount of freedom you have to move things around has a lot to do with attaching some sort of grammatical case marker – so long as all words are marked correctly, the order they are said doesn’t really matter). All languages contain some form of grammar – an agreed upon way to structure the words so they “make sense”. Typically each ‘word’ may be translated into another language, however, the translation may require additional words in the target language – for example, in Abenaki one says “tasakwabo” which means not just ‘sit, but to ‘sit on something solid; one word in Abenaki, four in English.
Glossolalia has none of the above – all sounds are not inherent to a particular ‘tongue’ – sounds in glossolalia will only comprise those found in the speaker’s native language (or any other language they may have been exposed to) and typically will not contain all of those sounds, but just a select random few. So the glossolalia of a speaker who has only ever been exposed to English will never contain say the retroflex sounds found in Dravidial langauges such as Tamil, nor will it ever contain sounds like the Welsh ‘ll’, or German ‘ü’ , or Zulu ‘dl’. It will only contain sounds found in English.
Further, if a given combination of sounds are disallowed in the speaker’s native language, they will also be disallowed in their glossolalia.
In other words, the sounds of any given ‘tongue’ will only be comprised of those the speaker already knows. The only odd thing is that American speakers will usually trill their ‘r’ – makes the tongue sound more foreign.
There are no ‘words’ in glossolalia – there are pauses between utterances which can be construed as words when one hears it spoken or if it’s transcribed, but many of these utterances are repeated over and over.
Syllable structure is also very simplified – usually all open syllables; consonant (C), Vowel (V), CVCVCV, etc. which is one of the reasons speakers say they can speak it faster than they can English – the CVCV structure can be uttered a lot quicker than if there are closed syllables (CVC) – it just flows quicker.
Glossolalia does not have any grammatical structure – there is nothing that can even remotely be construed as grammatical endings or conjugation patters (with verbs). Even the most basic of languages has grammatical structure.
Here’s a great paper on some universal concepts of human language:
uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ikos/EXFAC03-AAS/h05/larestoff/linguistics/Chapter%203.(H05).pdf
When compared to glossolalia, almost every concept is lacking (with the exception that spoken human language contains consonants and vowels).
What you say about Tolkien’s languages as well as “Klingon”, or “Na’avi” (Avatar) is true – all of these are constructed languages (popularly known as “con-langs”) – they are all artificial, but all adhere to the rules and concepts of human languages – they all have set grammar and structure as well as a set lexicon. They even have rules of correct grammar! Though artificially constructed, they meet all the criteria for “real language”. Esperanto is also a constructed language - it’s lexicon is based on real languages however. It has thousands of speakers.
The thing is, is that all of these fall into and meet the criteria of real (human) language: lexicon, grammar and structure. Glossolalia has none of these.
