Re: unnatural languages

Jens S. Larsen wrote:

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.

Of course they are not in contact in the same way as a dane living in
Denmark is in contact with other danes. Ever heard of linguistic immersion?

Only in the context of English-speaking Canadian children learning
French. But I suppose the many international Esperanto conventions can
be described as something similar -- and why not include the local
conventions, there are foreigners all over the place anyway.

So you think meeting people at conventions is linguistic immersion?

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

Only when grammatical or phonetical distance is large.

Not at all. If there's a model you want to imitate, you can be
conscious about it all the way to identical pronunciation. Of course,
any language changes over time, both towards convergence and
divergence, even when hardly any of its speakers are aware of it, but
it seems to be a much slower development. For instance you could
hardly shift over to a different language unconsciously; but there's
no specific difference between that and maintaining your language
under the same name, but in another form.

Now and again, you completely disregard quantitative differences between things, and seem to think that just because something *can* happen in a given way, it's reasonable to say it happens that way.

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.

*I* get to say what I intended the word to mean, and I *did* explain it
from the start, 'grammar' is too loose of a concept and I didn't mention
'words'.

If as you repeatedly claim, differences between languages are of no
bearing, what are you even doing in this discussion, which is about the
way a 'conlang' differs from a natural language? You're trying to say it
doesn't differ by changing the object of contention. That's what's
boring about this.

Differences between languages can be important, just as the weight of
one's body. Still it's normal to say that the obese and the anorectic
(foreground) are of the same kind: homo sapiens (background). Why
should language be different from this?

Why do you choose to ignore the whole argument, which is precisely about *differences*?

Knowledge of idioms is conditioned on knowledge of the regularities in
the language, not the other way round.

What are you trying to say here? Where are the idioms (say) of Eo described?

Where you'd expect something like that to be described: in
dictionaries.

And who put them there? How comprehensive are the dictionaries? How are new idioms formed?

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.

...all of which has what to do with the fact that there is now no
complete description of a 'natlang' - for lack of comprehensivity and a
moving target, or epistemological limitations as you hint above -, let
alone of 'conlangs' - for the sheer amount of work their creators would
have to go through?

The problem actually isn't epistemological limitations, but the lack
of epistemological constraints. Astronomy has constraints: those who
claim that the earth is flat are not respecting them, for instance.
But for some obscure reason, such scientific constraints are typically
not held in high esteem in the community of linguists. Social/
individual, natural/artificial, for communication/for expression -- in
each of these claims about the essence of human language, there is one
that is as true as the round earth, and another as false as the flat
earth. We cannot just sit on our butts waiting for the data to dictate
us the answer, for conscious about it or not, we interpret data in the
light of a theory.

Now that you've been presented with the eight possible basic theories
of language (we can call them SNC, SNE, SAC, SAE, INC, INE, IAC, and
IAE for short), which one would you choose as a starting point for
linguistic research?

And now that you've embarked on an issue that has no relationship at all to what I was arguing, why should I follow you?

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.

'Could' doesn't cut it. You didn't have to invite some bloke to your
home to get your danish from him.

I didn't have to invite anyone to my home to learn Esperanto either.
13 years old I borrowed a textbook in the library, and half a year
later I popped up in a meeting in the local club in Århus, where a
Scot talked about Ireland. I understood enough of his speech to ask
why the cars drive on the left side in Ireland - that's the first
thing I said in Esperanto to somebody else.

And so you think you have full competence in Eo? Who has? Mind you, I can get along communicating with english-speaking people quite well. That doesn't mean any 10 year old english speaker can't immediately spot me as a foreigner, and I'm not talking about pronunciation.

Of course, such an experience should be enough to make me think that
Esperanto is such a wonderful thing that it's only the dark forces of
violence, hatred and ignorance in this world that holds it back. I
soon learned, though, that it doesn't come quite that easily for
everyone - but also that it's more of a difference between individuals
than between nations.

OK, this paragraph clearly betrays you.

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.

Oh, so if you have w, x, y and z groups of Eo speaking people who have a
hell of a time understanding each other because the only thing their
languages have in common is the Fundamento, and group w is dominant, x,
y and z will converge. If none of the four is dominant, they are only
one group. Makes perfect sense.

Yes, but only if most of human language is in-born.

That which is inborn is common to all languages, so it has no place in a discussion about differences between individual languages.

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?

That's not what I asked.

All right then: The Russians were not on their way to have a different
language, they were on their way to concentration camps. Esperanto
stayed the same in Russia, the development took place in the rest of
the world.

And what development was that? Surely it didn't impact that part of language which is inborn.
--
am

laurus : rhodophyta : brethoneg : smalltalk : stargate

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