Re: Responding to a challenge
From: Raymond S. Wise (mplsray_at_my-deja.com)
Date: 07/28/04
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Date: 28 Jul 2004 08:24:55 -0700
Nathan Sanders <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@wso.williams.edu> wrote in message news:<nsanders.DIE.SPAM-BB5EFB.04394922072004@news.verizon.net>...
> 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
I would think it noncontroversial that language itself serves the
purpose of communication. Therefore, the parts of language serve the
purpose of communication. Except, that is, if there are parts which
formerly served the purpose of communication and now exist only as a
sort of fossil. Those parts can be put to a sort of use: They allow us
to deduce past forms of a language, for example. But they don't serve
the purpose of communication.
> 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)".
I certainly agree that irregular verbs *can* do that. If, however, we
were to create an artificial dialect of English in which all verbs
were regular, we would expect that people would adapt the
language--creolize it--to deal with ambiguities such as those that you
mention, and the resulting language, taught to another group of
people, would be more quickly learned by second-language learners than
would English with its irregular verbs, yet would be equal in the
ability to express complex ideas.
>
> (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.).
Yes, but time does not remove complexity *overall.* The reason for
this is the same as the reason that biological evolution tends to not
remove complexity overall. Nature works with what is available to it,
and this results in complexity which does not serve any purpose. The
only way to get rid of this complexity is through artificial means: An
engineer can build a wing which is much less complex than a bird's
wing or a bat's wing, but birds or bats themselves could never achieve
such a reduction in complexity through evolution. For similar reasons,
because language change works with what already exists, a language
could not become less complex overall except with artificial
intervention, as would be the case, for example, if we were to
deliberately create a dialect of English which had only regular verbs
and regular pluralization.
>
> (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.
The above two points appear to me to be based upon a misapprehension,
that I believe that sign languages or creole languages are "simple." I
do not, as should have been obvious when I referred to their ability
to express complex ideas. Point (d) in particular is very odd: Even
if I were to believe that sign languages are simple--which I do
not--there would be no point in speaking of a comparison of English
plurals and ASL classifiers. That would be a rather clear-cut case of
comparing apples with oranges.
>
> > > 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?
It is sufficient to say that there are rules for ordering the words.
Let me take an artificial example. In Esperanto, while the usual word
order is SVO, you *could* have different word orders. "I see a dog"
could be: SVO, "Mi vidas hundon," SOV, "Mi hundon vidas," VSO, "Vidas
mi hundon," VOS, "Vidas hundon mi," "OSV," "Hundon mi vidas," OVS,
"Hundon vidas mi." You have a freedom of word order, but the
inflection "=n" *must* be given the object. If you were to get rid of
the object marker, your choices of word order would become narrower,
the word order would become more rigid, in order to be able to express
the same meaning.
>
> > 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.
In principle, the matter could be tested by taking people, dividing
them into two groups, and teaching one of them English and the other
one an artificial dialect of English with regular pluralization. The
prediction would be that people who learned the English with regular
pluralization would gain a better level of fluency than the other
group within a given time period.
However, my point in making the thought experiment was to illustrate
the *principle* that a language can be equal in expressing the
complexity of ideas even though the form is simple. Let's alter the
thought experiment: Make the regular plural marker in the artificial
dialect something besides "-s." Make it the prefix "plur-" for
example, or the prefix "plural." "Plurboy" instead of "boys,"
"plurman" instead of "men," "plurzucchini" instead of "zucchini" (the
plural, the word also a variant form for the plural, "zucchinis"). My
intuition in such a case tells me that the the degree of ambiguity one
might find in an artificial dialect with a regular "-s" plural would
be less than that for a regular "plur-" plural, and that of course
would be the prediction if the teaching experiment mentioned above
were to be carried out. I would be surprised, frankly, if it turned
out that you believed the "plur-" variety would not have less
ambiguity than the "-s" variety.
>
> (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.)
Again, the comparison is pointless, and if you think that it
represents anything that I wrote, you are wrong to do so.
Note:
[1] I have read that there is a sort of proto-inflection now occurring
in Chinese, but that does not reflect the status of the grammar as a
whole, which is, of course, one which works without inflections.
-- Raymond S. Wise Minneapolis, Minnesota USA E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
- Next message: Yusuf B Gursey: "Re: arabic dhu"
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