Re: Plausibility Check


bulkington63 wrote:

I think it works great! Your posts do not belong on a scientific
forum. Although I can give you credit for being so prolific, your
fantasy language has been shot down so many times by competent
linguists that the only resort is to warn people by giving you a poor
rating.

They _tried_ to shoot me down, but so far they didn't succeed.
I have the longer breath, I never lacked an answer, I got more
and better arguments. The two main objections against my
experimental reconstruction of the language spoken in the
Franco-Cantabrian space 15,000 years ago, a language I call
Guyan or Magdalenian, are

A) first I must learn all the phonetic laws, only then can I go
for an early level of language

B) and even if I knew all about phonetics my attempt would
be futile, since words are changing, no word possibly
survived more than 10,000 years

The latter is based on an incomplete understanding of evolution
that leaves out stasis, the powerful although not yet understood
mechanisms of keeping a species in shape. A new species
arises in a relatively short period of time, and can then persist
basically unchanged for eons (Nils Eldrege and Stehen Jay
Gould, on the basis of earlier authors). I claim the same for
words. I believe that some words persisted for very long times,
and I gave the reasons for it: some words are of an onomato-
poetic build, for example PAD for activity of feet, to pad along,
pad pad pad pad ... Moreover, words are kept in what I call
the verbal morphospace. Individual words can oscillate, but
they are safely kept in their place by the surrounding words.

As for the phonetic laws: they are fine for a time horizon of
a couple of millennia, but they fail when it comes to more
than, say, 10,000 years. When you attempt an earlier level
of time by means of those laws, a strange effect sets in:
notations of words are getting ever more complicated,
while one can safely assume that early language consisted
of very short and simple words. In physics such a paradox
effect would be considered evidence for something wrong
in the theory. With phonetic laws you are trapped. You move
inside a fish trap. Easy to get in, impossible to get out.
So I propose another way of tackling the problem of early
language: assume simple words of 1 or 2 or 3 letters,
and follow their evolution along the arrow of time ...

The scientific groups are not meant for epigonal purposes
only, the true raison d'être for a scientific forum are new
ideas that bring us further. I propose new ideas, I make
every step of mine transparent, and so far nobody could
take it up with me. Also I am a competent linguist. As
a teenager I asked myself: What is language?, and in
1974/75 I gave the following answer:

Language is the means of getting help, support
and understanding from those we depend upon
in one way or another --- and every means of
getting help, support and understanding may be
called language, on whatever level of life it occurs

Tell me what is wrong about my definition of language.
If you can point out a basic flaw therein, I shall leave
sci.lang.

Franz Gnaedinger

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: CLtL2 copyright question
    ... lot more conservative about what I'm willing to say in a casual forum. ... doesn't match the CL spec in semantics. ... personal description of a language that isn't even the one you could ... Common Lisp needs a publicly-modifiable specification for many reasons, of which here are a few examples. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: ELF loading
    ... alt.lang.asm will address the problems of machine language programmers ... questions about asm in relation to windows, will naturally involve the API and how to do thing with it. ... The only place an asmer should fall to post is in a text only forum. ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: ELF loading
    ... since DOS and BIOS and the windows API ... I think DirectShow and Direct3D become replaced when upgrading directX. ... sure that if all we did was posting on asm language itself, ... only place an asmer should fall to post is in a text only forum. ...
    (alt.lang.asm)
  • Re: Petition again MS
    ... ¤ all you were doing was taunting him. ... the VB6 forum. ... knowledge to use another language and is at home with interop. ... complex or obscure question to multiple forums ...
    (microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion)
  • Re: What are you reading?
    ... three novels. ... Very interesting reading. ... I like the language, and I like his style, but I ... is an internet forum the closest you've ever been to reading ...
    (alt.smokers.pipes)