Language and the Autism Spectrum

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I know that I am not the only person on WP who is highly sensitive to language use.

Language constructs all human experience at a fundamental level.

To the very sensitive/AS/Autists grammar might seem like a strait-jacket, words and sentences like attacks on their experience of life, language in general like a cage, or a storm of competing crushing compelling forces, or like an indispensable/crucial, ( thus highly sensitive to misuse by others ), tool for getting through life.

I am very sensitive to language, and what the standard western sentence structure " Subject verb object", for instance, means to me is that if I do something to someone else they are objectified, and vice versa. It is difficult to avoid.

For instance "touching". I once said to a friend that I felt that being touched was passive, whereas touching was active. She said, "But, when I touch, the person I touch touches me, equally". I couldn't see it. The only analogy which helped me understand what she meant was the example from physics; " A chair is standing on the ground; which one is exerting the most force on the other, the chair or the ground?" ( They each exert the same force on each other ).

Has anyone else noticed that language, eg: grammar, has an effect on how they perceive/experience fundamental things, and think that we may be particularly susceptible to, or "simply" more aware of, this effect?
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Last edited by ouinon on 06 Apr 2009, 8:25 am, edited 4 times in total.

absolutely. i get so frustrated when people use language senselessly in serious situations. on a day to day basis, language isnt as important, but if im actually conversing and not chit chatting (not talking about anything important at all), i feel that language must be criticized and evaluated to find Truth. Language needs to be effective such that "a" means "a" to everyone and not "b" to some people. sorry if that was a little confusing. i wish we could read minds so that we can portray ideas and not words.

Sure. There was an Indo-European Studies Association in the anthropology department at my university, and at the one meeting I went to the speaker put forth the idea that the "subject-verb-object" worldview is the reason Indo-Europeans conquered so much of the world.

That is interesting. Thank you!

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That and a little bit of religion.

Did PIE even have SVO word order? Older IE languages were not strictly analytic due to the elaborate declension/conjuagation systems, and I think that at least Latin and Sanskrit tended to SOV rather than SVO (of course Celtic was VSO, but then doesn't that just explain something about what happened to them). Likewise, I think Hittite (the oldest attested IE language) was SOV. Wait... >>>here<<< we go: "Indo-European had a flexible word order, tendency to Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)"

The idea that the SVO order of the Germanic and the SVO shift in the Romance speakers contributed to their world success does not seem easy to defend.

Anywho, SOV and SVO are together the majority of the world's preferred word orderings, so if a group of people speaking a language family came to rule the world, they would probably have one of them.

English sentences do not always require a subject. Commands don't have a subject - as in 'Get up!' 'Go to bed.' And diary writing often omits the subject.

And the thing that comes after the verb is not always an object. Take 'I am a woman'. 'A woman' isn't an object, but a subject complement. It is equal to 'I'.

Also, if you use the passive tense, object and subject switch. In 'he kissed the girl', the girl is the object, but she becomes the subject in 'the girl was kissed by the boy'.





I think this is the case for everyone - that language influences how they perceive the world. This is at least what linguistic studies seem to suggest. But I do find I am more sensitive to language than most. I notice all the patterns and details. The actual names of the linguistic components don't influence me in the same way as they influence you though. I don't think that if I do something to someone else, they are 'objectified' simply because the term 'object' is used for the noun that comes after the verb. The two terms have very different connotations and meanings in these different contexts. The term 'accusative' is used as a synonym for the direct object of a sentence, but I don't feel that people who I do something to are accused.

I think language affects the way we see the world, yes. We have to apply language to our surroundings to interpret them. An object is only an object because it has been labelled as such. I mean, the concept of 'object' is meaningless in a world (or mind?) without language.

What I have noticed is that I tend to speak in the passive rather than the active tense, as a way of distancing myself from what I am trying to express. Ie:

"It's a fear thing" as opposed to "I'm scared". I'm using the experience of "fear" as a noun - naming it as something outside of me rather than as an adjective to describe how I am feeling and making that association with self.

I'm very sensitive to language use mainly because I've done a degree in it and find other people's usage fascinating and sometimes plain annoying.

I was wondering whether the reason why some of us become sooo "language and grammar-sensitive" is because of our "impaired"/different body-language comprehension, so that like blind people become very aware of sounds etc, we end up "using" verbal language to get around, navigate by, guide us through life/events etc, far more than "NT"s.

It is a kind of "prosthetic" device, on which many of us are very dependent, and why we get so upset when others use it sloppily/inaccurately/casually, etc, as a blind person might if people started moving the furniture around, and when roadworks change pathways without notice/sufficient indications etc.

Makes me wonder who first "split a signal". The origin of language apparently involved breaking previously complex but self-contained signals, ( like a chimp call/cry ), into two or more parts, so that for example the signal for "oh no a chimp baby is on the ground", ( ie. a certain kind of danger ), was suddenly in two, "chimp baby" and "on the ground".

And even if that wasn't AS driven, the enormous expansion of language, vocabulary etc, may well have been.

That's where the DSM distinction between Aspergers Syndrome, which has no language delay, and the rest of the Autism spectrum, which can/does, is interesting.

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Re PIE etc: yes!! scholars agree that PIE was SOV.

In fact, Hindi, derived from PIE through Sanskrit, still uses word order emphatically (ie, yes tendency for SOV, but feel free to move the word order around depending on what you're trying to say.). I did a short study on Hindi grammar/phonology last year. Same with Latin, which is also derived from PIE and also an SOV. I studied Latin for 11 years. In fact, it is characteristic of Latin poetry to have the verb ANYWHERE in the sentence!! (This poses great difficulties for beginner Latin learners of course, since they have no idea which word is the verb.)

so this notion of "Western Grammar" being "SVO" is a bit linguocentric if you ask me.

SOV and SVO happen to characterise the majority of languages, but I think that may be an accident of history rather than an intrinsic natural selection. I would say languages survived where the people survived, not the other way around, and the primary reason for a people surviving would have been military/economic/political defence or expansion, rather than the fact of where they put their verbs, before or after the object. My primary language IS an SVO (English) and Latin is an SOV, and I must admit that SVO and SOV do seem more cognitively natural at least to me - however:

"I hit the ice."
Subject -- verb -- object

"The ice broke."
Object -- Verb.

OOOOHHHH. Even in English we have things that look like ergative-absolutives, even though it's a non-productive process. The O-S languages had to come from SOMEWHERE, even if they are virtually extinct now. (Used to know the history better but have become obsessed with other things recently.) You start realising actually not everyone thinks the same way as you, and maybe even our well established SVO/SOV are actually just accidents of history rather than "the MORE well-formed string."

and uh, to be on topic, because I am shaking now with the adrenalin of talking about linguistics and PIE, two of my utterly unavoidable obsessions, I agree with the OP to a point, but disagree that we're any more special than the usual linguistic geeks.

From one linguist to another, grammar is fascinating but ultimately worthless. English grammar alone, spoken by ordinary educated citizens, will change so much over just 10 years that arguing about whether someone said something wrong, or gave the wrong case, or whatever is completely meaningless. And as aspies who are focusing on how to be more effective in this world, we should quietly analyse the person's grammar to bits like the good aspies we are, file it away, and then move on!!

I am criticising myself and wish others to do the same, in general.

You and me both.


I have, on a number of totally unrelated occasions, with completely unrelated people, been given the not-terribly-flattering title of Grammar Nazi because of my uncontrollable correction of people's language use. It's toned down considerably, or at least how often I vocalize it has....I still get damn-near flappy if I hear someone destroying any language I happen to know fluently.

I almost never use subjects in my sentences when I talk to my cats. Cats don't really have a huge tendency towards metacognition; so a strong sense of "I" isn't very useful; nor is just naming objects, as cats are action- and motion-oriented. Generally my sentences with them are verb-object, present-tense, third-person only. Endings are standardized, no irregulars, no possessives. I don't know why I do this. It just seems appropriate. For example, I'd use the sentence, "Gets you kittyfood!"--using "you" as a possessive; it's almost never used as a subject--to call them to dinner. The verb "gets" has turned into a general term for "interact with"--whether it's another cat, a toy, a bug... For a cat, things have obvious singular uses, so the action is implicit in the object... As time goes on this odd shortened language is becoming more and more standardized. I have no idea how common this sort of thing is; but lots of people talk in odd ways to their animals, so I'm certainly not unusual. I don't know how much they understand, but they definitely read tone of voice and a few words--especially "treat"!

It would be interesting to study whether people use different grammar for baby-talk.

Eh, no. Absolutely not for me. Language has little impact on how I perceive things which is why I'm having issues with language.

What makes you think that?

ruveyn