Re: unnatural languages

In article <NeoZCgPtfT9FFwX$@baesystems.com>,
Richard Herring <richard.herring@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message <et2dtb$n0i@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <oMxwWCEMCT8FFw6e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Richard Herring <richard.herring@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message <esproe$1r8a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <1173354137.155781.136980@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Jens S. Larsen <jens_s_larsen@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Herman Rubin skribis:

Jens S. Larsen <jens_s_larsen@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
phoglund@xxxxxx:

I can see no reason why one needs to know a "natural language"
to learn a more structured one.

How do you suppose that the teacher is going to communicate with the
student, if they don't have some common means of communication?

Why cannot the common means be the structured language?

You are suggesting that teacher and student should communicate using the
language _you_ are advocating, which the student doesn't yet know? And
you don't perceive any difficulties with this approach?

If a community adopted a structured language, why should
the student know any other language than that of the
community? If someone grew up with Esperanto, and the
teacher used Esperanto, where would there be a problem,
not that I think Esperanto is that well designed.

Nor can I see a reason why
one needs to learn a natural language first.

Whether one "needs to learn" is irrelevant, since it's practically
impossible to stop a child acquiring (not "learning") the natural
language in its environment.

Why cannot the environmental language be structured?
That the present "natural languages" are not is no
hindrance; there are reasons to "start over", as
mathematics did in the late 16th century.

A modest proposal indeed! That would truly be a Language with a capital
L. Whose army and navy will you use?

A version of Latin was the scientific language until
the 19th century. No army and navy made English the
modern lingua franca. I have heard that Swahili is
the lingua franca of a large part of Africa; force
has nothing to do with it.


However, I can
see a reason why one needs to learn structure early, and the
earlier the better. Even good students who have learned
details have substantial difficulty in learning the concepts
in mathematics,

As a statistician, you may be qualified to make that observation...

and I suspect in language as well;

... but that's merely an uninformed opinion. Ne sutor ultra crepidam...

Not totally uninformed, having studied more than one
"foreign" language. In my generation, and also later,
students have been known to remark that they really
learned their English grammar by taking a grammar-
oriented foreign language course.

It's a truism, but so what? One doesn't need training in grammar to
speak one's native language grammatically. Learning _about_ language and
acquisition of a language are entirely different things.

Yes and no. Learning about the structure of a language,
or any other subject, can make it FAR easier to learn
that subject, and more so, to understand it. Learning
the structure of French, or Hebrew, makes it possible
not to just translate, but to internalize what is learned.

there is
a strong opinion that children learn grammar (in the extended
sense of structure) early.

Acquire, not "learn".

A large proportion of those who
learned to read by the whole word method never mastered the
phonic use of the alphabet.

Learning to read is an activity quite distinct from language
acquisition.

Unclear. What is a language? There is a language
of mathematics, which is entirely written; when it
is needed to communicate it orally, that communication
is a transliteration into some other language. But
the written language, except for terms for which the
terminology requires abbreviations, is immediately
comprehensible to mathematicians everywhere. It can
be taught to children, but apparently not to those
who are now teaching the children; they no longer
have the ability to handle a precise language.

The written language is quite important.

Where it exists. Many languages are not written at all.

Are they going to survive? Only be heroic methods.

In some languages,
the spoken language is far less clear than the written.

Which languages, and clear to whom? I bet the native speakers of those
languages don't think they lack clarity.

Most of the world's people have no idea of clarity.
People speaking different idiolects who think it is
the same language do not communicate that well.
What is "democracy"?

In statistics, it is even worse,

What _is_ the phonic use of the alphabet in statistics?

There are three levels of language involved in statistics.

The immediate level is probability, which has its own
concepts, very poorly understood by those learning by
memorization and computation.

Not a language in the sense that linguists use the word.

If they cannot use that language, they will be unable
to understand the concepts.

The previous level is
that of the basic parts of algebra, set algebra, and
some analysis.

Not a language in the sense that linguists use the word.

Likewise.

And behind this is the language of
variables and basic mathematical communication, in
this highly structured language.

Not a language in the sense that linguists use the word.

Likewise.

As the language is essentially written only, and
pronounced differently by those using different
languages using their phonic patters, it does not
have a phonic use of the alphabet. Except for
explanatory material, its use of symbols is
independent of "natural" languages.

So "the phonic use of the alphabet in statistics" is an absurdity.

Yes, because the language is essentially written only.
However, someone who has ONLY learned the whole word
method, and has not learned the specific word "statistics",
will be unable to read the word, or have any idea what it
might mean.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
.

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