Re: Responding to a challenge

From: Nathan Sanders (nsanders.DIE.SPAM_at_wso.williams.edu)
Date: 07/22/04 

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 08:39:47 GMT

In article <CZCdnT-2RYCm8GLdRVn-gQ@gbronline.com>,
 "Raymond S. Wise" <mplsrayNOSPAM@gbronline.com> wrote:

[re: sign languages]
> linguist.) I know that, compared to other languages, they are young
> languages. It takes time to develop
> complexity-that-does-not-serve-the-purpose-of-communication.

A few questions:

(a) Why do you think such complexity actually exists? That is, how do
you know that all complexity serves no "purpose" (if anything in
language can be said to have a "purpose")? For example, irregular
forms of frequently-used words add more redundancy, helping to protect
them from being misunderstood in errorful speech. If I say "We saw
many choldren yesterday", you know what I meant. Not so with if I
make the same error saying "We saw many bills (bowls)".

(b) Why do you think that time necessarily adds complexity to a
language? Time also removes complexity (through simplification of
syllable structure, phonemic mergers, loss of inflections, etc.).

(c) Why do you think a sufficient amount of complexity can only arise
over a long period of time? The Great Vowel Shift happened very
rapidly and was such a complex sound change that it is almost
single-handedly responsible for the infamous spelling woes of English.

(d) Do you not consider ASL classifiers "complex"? You have to learn
two signs for every noun, and the second sign is shared with a bunch
of other nouns, that may or may not be related to each other.

> > How is that interesting? Every language is complex in one area, simple
> > in another.
>
> Would you agree that this is the case with the grammar of Chinese (let's
> limit it, for the sake of discussion, to Mandarin)? That it is simple as far
> as inflections are concerned, complicated as far as word order is concerned?

What constitutes a "complex" word order? Different word orders for
different clause types (SVO in main clauses, SOV in relative clauses,
VSO in other subordinate clauses, etc.)? Different orderings of
phrasal components among different head types (verbs and prepositions
precede their complements, while adjectives and nouns follow theirs)?
A rare word order like OSV?

> The thought experiment I mentioned clearly demonstrates that it is possible
> for two languages to be identical in the ability to communicate complex
> ideas while one is noticeably less complex in form than the other.

Your thought experiment makes one of the languages less complex with
one aspect of language, but you have no way of knowing what impact on
complexity it will have elsewhere in the language.

In this case, an example of increased complexity in the supposedly
simpler language is that, since all plurals have the same ending,
pairs like <goose> and <goof>, which are potentially confusable in the
singular, would continue to be just as confusable in the plural. In
the "complex" language, since they have different plurals, they are
actually *less* confusable in the plural. Surely less confusability
is simpler? (For the listener, certainly, which means it's simpler for
the speaker, too, since fewer words are needed to avoid confusion.)
And this is but one way in which complexity has been added through
simplification.

The big problem then comes in when you try to compare the relative
complexity of an inflectional rule versus a bunch of completely
different types of complexity. Which is "worse"? How many
<goose>/<goof> near-minimal pairs would it take to over-ride the
simplicty of the regular plural not worth it? To my knowledge, no one
has a definitive answer, so it seems presumptuous to claim that a
regular plural variant of English is, on the whole, simpler than
standard English.

(And I'm still not convinced that the English plural system is more
complex than ASL classifiers! English has maybe a dozen or two
different ways to form plurals, but many of these are only used for
one or two nouns each, and the vast majority of English nouns fit into
a single predictable pattern.)

Nathan 

-- 
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program       nsanders@wso.williams.edu                           
Williams College          http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267

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