Re: unnatural languages

António Marques:

Jens S. Larsen wrote:
António Marques:
....
As well as for what doesn't exist in Esperanto. Or invent new
expressions altogether. Which only by convergent evolution may resemble
what other speakers come up with.
Why wouldn't people try to converge? They are learning the language
consciously.

Just how did you manage to miss the fact that they are not in contact
with each other?

What century are you living in? They _are_ in contact.

And when convergence happens it is mostly by itself, not the result of
conscious attempts.

Most convergence happens because people give up their dialect in favor
of a standard language. Attempts towards that goal can be very
conscious.


What you call linguistic
background is not the background, it's the foreground!
'Background' as in previous knowledge, not as in landscape.
That background is common to all people.

You've just said that my knowlege of portuguese (say) idioms is the same
as your knowlege of danish idioms and 'common to all people'.

The background of language is not the words, but the grammar.
Knowledge of idioms is conditioned on knowledge of the regularities in
the language, not the other way round.


Language is a natural phenomenon.

(What?)

If we want to study some dynamic object, there are three fundamental
questions to ask: Where can we find the object, how did it get there,
and what is it for. As it happens, in the case of language there are
only two answers to each question: language is either to be found
within the individual speaker or in society (between speakers), it's
there either because of man's nature or his cultural development, and
it's basically used either for communication or expression. That makes
for 2 x 2 x 2 possible different models of language, and the goal of
linguistics is to prove which one is scientifically correct. Of the
eight models I've decided to follow Chomsky, who maintains that
language is an natural, individual means of expression. Many
generativists, including Pinker, prefer to look on languge as a means
of communication (natural and individual), whereas the structuralists
tend to take it as an invention made by society. During the first half
of the 19th century, most linguists (especially in Germany) considered
langage as a feature of society, but society itself as a natural
object.


How do native speakers end up with "the same, coherent language"? And
if that's not a complete mystery, why cannot the procedure be mimicked
on the basis of a description of a language?
They end up with "the same, coherent language" by following each other's
speech.
How do they do that without a comprehensive, in-born theory about what
human language can look like?
Usually, imitation and observation of the feedback do the trick.
Well, if it's good enough for parrots, I suppose it's good enough for
people.

And just how do you imitate the Eo learns from NZ that you have no
contact with?

We could invite Stefan MacGill over. He's from New Zealand, but he
lives in the Netherlands now.


There's nothing forbidding a 'conlang' from *becoming* a natural
language. After which it no longer is what it was before. For before it
was A, after it is A+B, with B a very large part of A+B. And if some
group comes up with A+C, which will be to a large extent
incomprehensible to A+B folk, both groups can't claim their version is
the right A.
In the case of an international language there actually is a
criterion: the isolated group loses out.

What if you have no dominant group?

Then there is only one group.


Esperanto was forbidden under
Stalin, so when the contacts to Russian Esperantists were
reestablished, it quite naturally were the Russians who had to catch
up.

It seems you're admitting they were on their way to have a different
language.

Well, if lack of contact automatically induces divergence, then
restablishing contact should lead to just as automatic reconvergence,
right?

Jens S. Larsen

.

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