Re: History of French
From: Nathan Sanders (nsanders.DIE.SPAM_at_wso.williams.edu)
Date: 09/25/04
- Next message: Mxsmanic: "Re: Chromatics was Phonics, was: History of French"
- Previous message: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: how come slavs have ridiculously consonant packed names?"
- In reply to: Herman Rubin: "Re: History of French"
- Next in thread: Jacques Guy: "Native speakers, grandchildren of History of French"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 03:09:47 GMT
In article <cj1g5f$35m6@odds.stat.purdue.edu>,
hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:
> >If native speakers of language L say X in L, then X is correct in L.
> >X is not necessarily correct in a different language (which includes
> >the standard form of L), of course,.
>
> Which native speakers? According to this, there would be
> dozens of different "English" languages.
One English idiolect per native speaker of the abstract language we
call "English", in fact. That idiolects may be mutually intelligible
doesn't mean they aren't different.
For me, "language" is "the shared speech patterns of a group of
people". In the special case of a group of size 1, the language is
also called an idiolect.
Larger groups require some level of abstraction (averaging over
speakers, factoring in variability, etc.). Obviously, if you get a
group of people who aren't all mutually intelligible "enough", you'll
end up with an impoverished set of speech patterns that wouldn't be
suitable for normal human communication.
(One could arguably use "suitable for normal human communication" as a
diagnostic for dividing "languages" from "dialects". I don't
particularly care about that distinction, since there isn't yet an
accepted consensus on what it really mean.)
> This is the "modern" version of social science brought in
> by the socialist educationists,
Socialst? Which kind? (Not that it really matters, because I'm not
quite sure I'd be labelled a socialist. I'm pretty happy with
semi-regulated competetive capitalism.)
What do one's economic (or political) leanings have to do with the
study of linguistic data, anyway?
> that there is nothing
> which can be called "right".
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. How does my definition above
not make a distinction between "correct" and "incorrect", either for
individuals or for groups? (The boundary may be fuzzy, but there are
certainly things that are unquestionably "correct" and things that are
unquestionably "incorrect", both for individuals and for groups.)
> They extend it to everything
> else, which is why education has gone downhill.
This is just the typical (and very tired) doom and gloom that has
plagued society for generation after generation: old farts gripe that
young'uns are ruining everything, that civilation is going down the
toilet, that things were better 50 years ago, yadda yadda yadda. This
has been going on for as long as civilations have had grandparents
with teenage grandchildren.
Nathan
-- Nathan Sanders Linguistics Program nsanders@wso.williams.edu Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders Williamstown, MA 01267
- Next message: Mxsmanic: "Re: Chromatics was Phonics, was: History of French"
- Previous message: Peter T. Daniels: "Re: how come slavs have ridiculously consonant packed names?"
- In reply to: Herman Rubin: "Re: History of French"
- Next in thread: Jacques Guy: "Native speakers, grandchildren of History of French"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
