September 18, 2016

September 18, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Yesterday my clients and I laughed a lot as we were exploring how people say all sort of things which they don’t really mean. For instance, people say they are sorry, but they are not sorry. They say: “I don’t mean to disturb you”, but they disturb you anyway; they say: “I don’t mean rain on your parade, but…” they rain on your parade; or “I hate to bring it to you, but…” they seem to enjoy telling you everything that is wrong about you; others may say “I don’t mean to interrupt, but..”, they interrupt you; or “I don’t mean to be rude, but…”, they are rude to you. 

What are we to make of this? Does saying what we do justify what we do? We say “I don’t mean to sound harsh, but…” we say something which sounds harsh. It is obvious that we affect each other with the sound of our voice. Moreover, in each of these examples the speaker knows damned well he or she produces Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Someone may say “I don’t mean to cut you off, but…” they cut you off; “I don’t mean to judge you, but..” they judge you; and “I don’t mean to upset you” when they upset you. In each of these cases the listener is likely to experience the speaker’s voice as an aversive stimulus. 

As these examples illustrate, the speaker knows he or she dominates the listener, but he or she covers it up by saying what he or she says. It is very common.  Listeners may say of such a dominating speaker: “he likes to hear himself talk”, but what they really mean is that he forces them to listen to him and, therefore, he is not listening to himself at all, as is always the case in NVB. The NVB speaker doesn’t listen to himself or herself as this would change his or her insensitive demeanor.

September 17, 2016

September 17, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I am trying to imagine that this is the first thing you ever read about my work. I am a psychology instructor and a therapist. I teach three classes in Principles of Psychology at Butte College, Oroville and, at this point, I see 28 mental health clients a week. Each of my classes is at full capacity, which means 38 students are enrolled. I am booked up and my life is busier than ever before. I am proud of being busy as I know that I am making a difference in the lives of many. 

I teach from a book on the many issues which are related to the field of psychology, such as: emotion, motivation, sensation, perception, stress, mental disorders, psycho-analysis, behaviorism, just to name a few. My students learn about these matters, write papers and take quizzes and exams. They also learn about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). 

Everything I teach is taught against the background of the SVB/NVB distinction. We re-visit it again and again as it is of utmost importance. My students like the way I teach and tell me how much they learn, before, in, and, after class, in their papers and in their evaluations.  Likewise, I treat my mental health clients with the skills and knowledge I have acquired after years of studying and teaching psychology study.

Teaching and therapy are my passion. I am able to help my clients with their problems and each one of them is slowly improving and recovering. How am I able to do that? The facts speak for themselves. They are treated not only by my knowledge of psychology and behaviorism, they are stimulated to pay attention to the SVB/NVB distinction. I point out to them how the listener is affected by the sound of the speaker.

September 16, 2016

September 16, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “Sound, Symbolism, and Swearing; an Affect Induction Perspective” (2010) by Yardy. Today I had a skype conversation with the author. He agreed with each of my findings and was excited about my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which is also explained by the Affect Induction Model (AIM) and the Sonority Hierarchy (SH). 

It was interesting to have face-to-face interaction with this excellent researcher, who acknowledged how adversarial the conversation is among academics and how much the emphasis on the printed word obfuscates the importance of the spoken word. By talking with him it n became clear what a taboo has been placed on talking and listening. 

Many papers continue to be written, but little or no actual conversation is taking place among researchers. Brandon agreed with me that if we would have SVB, our communication would be much more productive. Also the important issue of scientific spoken communication was briefly addressed.  Regardless of whether they do manipulate listeners because they have more power or sophisticated acting skills, as long as communicators dominate their listeners they can’t be scientific. 

During SVB it is self-evident that none of the speakers dominate the listeners and that the speaker and the listener take turns, that is, that the speakers can become the listeners and listeners can become speakers at any given moment. This turn-taking is essential to maintaining equality among the speaker and the listener. In NVB the speaker and the listener are separate as there is no such turn-taking. 

My conversation with Brandon Yardy illustrated why in our current academic environment it is almost impossible to have SVB. Competition among academics not only prevents collaboration and intellectual exploration, it takes away from people their integrity as it puts great stress on the relationship between supervisors and supervisees.

Brandon and I have both been disappointed by the lack of support from our superiors for our ideas when we were working towards our degree. 


I withdrew from candidacy for the Ph.D. in psychology at Palo Alto University (PAU) as nobody there was interested in my distinction between SVB and NVB. In retrospect it is astounding and insulting that the director of this institution once invited me and my wife for dinner at his house. This was not, as I thought at the time, a social occasion, the dinner had only one purpose: I had to submit to my supervisor’s topic of interest. I was told in plain language by the director himself that only after I had earned my Ph.D. I would be able to pursue my own interest. 


It is incredible that I have paid (and continue to pay) so much money for the inconsiderate and intellectually dishonest manner in which I have been treated. Although I never doubted that withdrawing was the right thing to do, it is indeed a sad state of affairs that nobody at PAU was capable of backing up my scientific ideas, which are supported by all the researchers that are mentioned in Yardy’s thesis. 

Brandon and I immediately understood each other and our conversation clarified my distinction between SVB and NVB. The fact that also his outstanding work has hardly received any attention doesn’t surprise me. I have faith in the process and I am sure that our conversations will make more people aware about the SVB/NVB distinction. The AIM and SH as well as many other phenomena will make more sense once we  know about this distinction. Yardy’s work is more than merely words on paper as it fully supports SVB, the science of vocal verbal behavior. 

September 15, 2016

September 15, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my eight response to “Sound, Symbolism, and Swearing; an Affect Induction Perspective” (2010) by Yardy. Parker’s work (2008) demonstrates that there is “a cross-linguistic pattern supporting his sonority theory” and Peperkamp’s work (2016) demonstrates that in every language the pattern of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) exists. Moreover, these two universal response classes are perfectly explained by the sonority theory. 

“The measure that consistently correlated best with sonority was intensity or amplitude (loudness) with a very strong Spearman correlation of 0.91 (Parker, 2002, Parker 2008). It is unequivocally clear that SVB only contains “consonants high in sonority” which “tend to have a tonal and soothing pattern”, while NVB “contains consonants low in sonority” which “tend to have a broadband harsh pattern.” 

I witness the far-reaching consequences of a “tonal, soothing pattern” versus a “broadband, harsh pattern” in each of my mental health clients and in each of the students of the psychology classes I teach. I totally agree with the researchers Owren and Rendal (1997), who suggest that “words used in different contexts might be chosen based in part on the affective impact of their phonemic impact as predicted by the Affect Induction approach to animal communication.” In other words (pun intended), agreeable words sound different from disagreeable words. 

The great importance of Yardy’s work (2010) is that it demonstrates that “consistent word form expectations” might “not be limited to nonsense images and words but ultimately affect real word usage, at least in some natural contexts.” This can be easily verified when we talk with each other and explore the SVB/NVB distinction. Our words are not arbitrary and how they sound always has inherent meaning.

The reader should not be surprised to find out that “The swearwords and profanity category contained significantly more harsh sounding consonants than lullabies and carols.” The same can be said about the NVB and SVB category. Based on Yardy’s work, I hypothesize that speakers produce high amounts of “expletives and epithets” in NVB, but hardly swear at all in SVB. I endorse Yardy’s powerful suggestion that “the Affect Induction model may have explanatory power not only for animal communication but also for human communication.” 

I have had various wonderful long skype conversations with Brandon Yardy. As expected, we immediately connected. Our conversation flowed with SVB and we felt tremendously validated by each other.

When we consider the SVB/NVB distinction, we agree the AIM applies to animals and to humans. We can verify this while we speak. Only if we are in non-aversive situations will we be able to have SVB, but when we find ourselves in hostile, threatening or intimidating circumstances, we will engage in NVB. We are clueless about the extent to which we, like other animals, produce sounds “with acoustic properties” that “influence or manipulate a targeted listener’s affective state.” 

Human communication, like animal communication, is for the most part NOT about “relaying information from one animal to another, as purported by classical ethology” (Owren & Rendall, 1997). Therefore, the prominent information processing model didn’t and couldn’t produce an integrated understanding of animal communication. Moreover, it is now evident that our misunderstanding of animal communication was based on our misunderstanding about our own human communication. 

It is catastrophic that “Just as classical ethologist viewed animal communication as an exchange of information between among senders and receivers, linguists have traditionally viewed human language as being exclusively purposed to convey information to other individuals” (Scott-Phillips, 2006). To our own detriment we select high rates of NVB and justify this with explanatory fictions. If “language is selected to improve conveyance of information by increasing understandability (Pinker & Bloom, 1990) we would produce higher rates of SVB.

September 14, 2016

September 14, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “Sound, Symbolism, and Swearing; an Affect Induction Perspective” (2010) by Yardy. Parker’s work (2008) demonstrates that there is “a cross-linguistic pattern supporting his sonority theory” and Peperkamp’s work (2016) demonstrates that in every language the pattern of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) exists. Moreover, these two universal response classes are perfectly explained by the sonority theory. 

“The measure that consistently correlated best with sonority was intensity or amplitude (loudness) with a very strong Spearman correlation of 0.91 (Parker, 2002, Parker 2008). It is unequivocally clear that SVB only contains “consonants high in sonority” which “tend to have a tonal and soothing pattern”, while NVB “contains consonants low in sonority” which “tend to have a broadband harsh pattern.”

I witness the far-reaching consequences of a “tonal, soothing pattern” versus a “broadband, harsh pattern” in each of my mental health clients and in each of the students in the psychology classes I teach. I totally agree with the researchers Owren and Rendal (1997), who suggest that “words used in different contexts might be chosen based in part on the affective impact of their phonemic impact as predicted by the Affect Induction approach to animal communication.” In other words (pun intended), agreeable words sound different from disagreeable words. 

The great importance of Yardy’s work (2010) is that it demonstrates that “consistent word form expectations” might “not be limited to nonsense images and words but ultimately affect real word usage, at least in some natural contexts.” This can be easily verified when we talk with each other and explore the SVB/NVB distinction. Our words are not arbitrary and how they sound always has inherent meaning.

The reader should not be surprised to find out that “The swearwords and profanity category contained significantly more harsh sounding consonants than lullabies and carols.” The same can be said about the NVB and SVB category. Based on Yardy’s work, I hypothesize that speakers produce high amounts of “expletives and epithets” in NVB, but hardly swear at all in SVB. I endorse Yardy’s powerful suggestion that “the Affect Induction model may have explanatory power not only for animal communication but also for human communication.” 

I have had various wonderful long skype conversations with Brandon Yardy. As expected, we immediately connected. Our conversation flowed with SVB and we felt tremendously reinforced by each other.

When we consider the SVB/NVB distinction, we agree the AIM applies to animals and to humans. We can verify this while we speak. Only if we are in non-aversive situations will we be able to have SVB, but when we find ourselves in hostile, threatening or intimidating circumstances, we will engage in NVB. We are clueless about the extent to which we, like other animals, produce sounds “with acoustic properties” that “influence or manipulate a targeted listener’s affective state.” 

Human communication, like animal communication, is for the most part NOT about “relaying information from one animal to another, as purported by classical ethology” (Owren & Rendall, 1997). Therefore, the prominent information processing model didn’t and couldn’t produce an integrated understanding of animal communication. Moreover, it is now evident that our misunderstanding of animal communication was based on our misunderstanding about our own human communication. 

It is catastrophic that “Just as classical ethologist viewed animal communication as an exchange of information between among senders and receivers, linguists have traditionally viewed human language as being exclusively purposed to convey information to other individuals” (Scott-Phillips, 2006). To our own detriment we continue to select high rates of NVB and justify this with explanatory fictions. If “language is selected to improve conveyance of information by increasing understandability (Pinker & Bloom, 1990), we would produce higher rates of SVB!