Integral grammar

We have an IPS discussion on Balder's paper "Sophia Speaks." He discusses some ideas on expanding that paper in this post. Below is one of my thread responses on some other ideas in this regard:

Grammar is defined as the rules for how sentences are structured in a language, i.e., syntax and morphology. So in addition to the parts of language (noun, verb etc.) grammar is also about how the parts of speech relate to each other. It seems that it is in how grammars are constructed in the various languages and dialects where we get more general overall worldview approaches from which the various philosophies arise. E.g., English grammar is generally constructed in the noun-verb-object syntax, and this to a large extent determines how one will translate the world. Chinese grammar, while having the noun-verb-object syntax, nevertheless places modifiers in front of the head noun more like languages the have a noun-object-verb structure (e.g. Japanese). (See linguistic typology for how various languages determine word order.)

Also Chinese does not have the strict separation between words as does English. French grammar, like other Romance languages, inflects words with number, gender, case mood, tense, voice. All of these differences determine how we structure our worldview philosophies.


Languages per above are differentiated into families like Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo etc. So exploring how western philosophies might emphasize particular word elements or arrangements might be more influenced by the fact that they are all Indo-European languages. Granted there are different types within that family, like Germanic, Celtic, Italic etc., which may account for some of the different emphases. And per above some of them have different word orders and/or word inflections. But they can be quite different from the Sino-Tibetan, with consequent and sometimes drastic differences in worldview philosophy.

It might also be interesting to explore how geography, climate etc. influenced the development of languages, more along the lines of Bryant's Real infrastructural domain, since the different language types are geographically defined. E.g., soils rich in certain minerals and nutrients may well have influenced how one formed words, phrases and grammars. Or easy access to drinkable water or not, and so on.