Editing Speaking in tongues (section)

==Linguistics==
In 1972, [[William J. Samarin]], a linguist from the [[University of Toronto]], published a thorough assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia<ref>{{Cite book |last=Samarin |first=William J. |url=https://archive.org/details/tonguesofmenange0000sama/page/n15/mode/2up?q=Russian |title=Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism |publisher=Macmillan |year=1972 |location=New York |oclc=308527}}</ref> that became a classic work on its linguistic characteristics.{{No source|date=March 2025}} His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public and private Christian meetings in Italy, the Netherlands, Jamaica, Canada, and the United States over the course of five years; his wide range of subjects included the Puerto Ricans of [[the Bronx]], the [[Snake handling in Christianity|snake handlers]] of the [[Appalachians]] and the [[Molokans]] from Russia in Los Angeles.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Samarin |first=William J. |url=https://archive.org/details/tonguesofmenange0000sama/page/n15/mode/2up?q=Russian |title=Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism |publisher=Macmillan |year=1972 |location=New York |page=xii |oclc=308527}}</ref>

Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels found in a language known to the speaker:

<blockquote>It is verbal behaviour that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels ... in a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart and rearranged pseudogrammatically ... with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Samarin |first=William J. |author-link=William J. Samarin |url=https://archive.org/details/tonguesofmenange0000sama/page/120/mode/2up |title=Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism |publisher=[[The Macmillan Company]] |year=1972 |location=New York |page=120 |oclc=308527}}</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Samarin |first=William J. |title=Sociolinguistic vs. Neurophysiological Explanations for Glossolalia: Comment on Goodman's Paper |jstor=1384556 |journal=Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion |volume=11 |issue=3 |year=1972 |pages=293–296 |doi=10.2307/1384556}}</ref></blockquote>

That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed by others.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Atkins |first=L. Patrick |date=2014-10-27 |title=Phonetic Descriptions of Glossolalia |url=https://mars.gmu.edu/items/451be143-9c9d-4676-b470-fe870982c7a8 |journal=[[George Mason University]] |language=en-US |quote=This study concludes that linguistic universals influence glossolalia and that the segments of a glossolalist’s speech are a subset of the segments of his or her native language.}}</ref> [[Felicitas Goodman]], a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Goodman |first=Felicitas D. |author-link=Felicitas Goodman |year=1969 |title=Phonetic Analysis of Glossolalia in Four Cultural Settings |journal=Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=227–35 |doi=10.2307/1384336 |jstor=1384336}}</ref> These findings were confirmed by Kavan (2004).<ref>New Zealand Linguistic Society: Heather Kavan [[Massey University]]: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242187721_WE_DON'T_KNOW_WHAT_WE'RE_SAYING_BUT_IT'S_PROFOUND_THE_LANGUAGE_AND_CONTEXTS_OF_GLOSSOLALIA Heather Kavan "We don't know what we're saying, but it's profound"]</ref>

Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface and so concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language".<ref name="Samarin128">{{Cite book |last=Samarin |first=William J. |url=https://archive.org/details/tonguesofmenange0000sama/page/128/mode/2up |title=Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism |publisher=Macmillan |year=1972 |location=New York |page=128 |oclc=308527}}</ref> He reached this conclusion because the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organized, and – most importantly of all – there was no systematic relationship between units of speech and concepts. Humans use language to communicate, but glossolalia does not. Therefore, he concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives".<ref name="Samarin128" /> On the basis of his linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically structured human [[utterance]], believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Samarin |first=William J. |url=https://archive.org/details/tonguesofmenange0000sama/page/2/mode/2up |title=Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism |publisher=Macmillan |year=1972 |location=New York |page=2 |oclc=308527}}</ref>

Felicitas Goodman studied a number of Pentecostal communities in the United States, the Caribbean, and Mexico; these included English-, Spanish- and Mayan-speaking groups. She compared what she found with recordings of non-Christian rituals from Africa, Borneo, Indonesia and Japan. She took into account both the segmental structure (such as sounds, syllables, phrases) and the supra-segmental elements (rhythm, accent, intonation) and concluded that there was no distinction between what was practised by the Pentecostal Protestants and the followers of other religions.<ref name="Goodman 1972">{{Cite book |last=Goodman |first=Felicitas D. |author-link=Felicitas Goodman |url=https://archive.org/details/speakingintongue00feli |title=Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study in Glossolalia |publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]] |year=1972 |isbn=978-0226303246 |location=Chicago |oclc=393056 |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=August 2010}}