Re: Responding to a challenge
From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 07/29/04
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Date: Thu, 29 Jul 2004 11:26:38 GMT
Raymond S. Wise wrote:
> > I have no idea what he's talking about, since no one has ever measured
> > the comparative complexity of languages, nor come up with a metric for
> > it. That must be what Zobby was referring to by lots of recent
> > discussion.
> >
> > Nor do I _still_ see how you get from his absurdity to a claim about
> > what "linguists recognize."
>
> Oh, I'm now willing to admit that the consensus among linguists on the
> matter does not agree with me, if indeed there can be said to be a
> consensus. However, you mentioned Otto Jespersen in another post. I am aware
> that Jespersen created an artificial language, Novial, and I now see that he
> was not only involved in the creation of Ido, an offshoot of Esperanto, but
> held the position of president of the Ido Academy for three years. I don't
> see how it is possible for him to have been involved in both projects if he
> had not had a belief in the very duality I have been discussing.
Perhaps if anyone had ever expressed your notion, Jespersen would have
expressed an opinion on it. But you seem to be the originator of the
concept.
> > So he's even more not much of a linguist, if he had trouble following
> > Cree grammar. Central Algonquian was Bloomfield's parade example of
> > "Native" languages being as rich -- not baroquely overrich -- as the
> > hallowed Indo-European.
>
> Hmm, I'm not sure if you can call a complexity in language "richness" if it
> does not serve the function of communication. Perhaps the expression
> "baroque" invokes "richness" to you, but to me it invokes odd and pointless
> excess. "Richness" implies value, and there is no communicative value to the
> particular type of complexity in question. McWhorter does find a particular
> value in it, because he finds these languages more interesting, from the
> linguist's point of view, than the "bland" languages which currently serve
> as lingua francas in the world economy (he refers to a "'vanilla' quotient"
> in these lingua francas, as I mentioned before, citing Swahili as an example
> of a language to which one could apply that term). But this value for study
> by a linguist is not a primary value of language: People use language
> primarily to communicate. In that sort of complexity, the ability to express
> complex ideas, Central Algonquian would of course be just as rich as any
> other complete language.
>
> Note that it can be argued that some aspects of Esperanto, which I have
> identified as one of the less complex languages, involve this very same
> baroqueness, this needless complexity. For example, the tenses in Esperanto
> could be dropped and tense indicated only by context or some sort of marker
> brought in only when context was insufficient.
>
> Again, I am not insisting that such a duality as I have discussed exists. I
> do insist that it is impossible to understand what McWhorter wrote, or why
> Jespersen would be involved in the artificial language projects he was
> involved in, unless they both were believers in the duality in question.
Then a century and a half of linguists have been operating in the dark.
-- Peter T. Daniels grammatim@att.net
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