Re: If you were to design a language, how many vowels and consonants would you use?

On Dec 19, 11:13 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<jimbo.ty...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote...
On Dec 18, 11:42 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

To me, the analogy between "language" and "species" seems quite a
useful
one. A species is a population of organisms reproductively isolated
from all other populations. A language is a conglomeration of speech
varieties (idiolects) communicatively isolated from other such
systems.

Except not. Speakers of different languages (or speech varieties, or
idiolects) *aren't* communicatively isolated from each other and,
therefore

(therefore??)

Yes, therefor.


neither are the speech varieties (languages, idiolects)
themselves

Obviously, idiolects aren't -- people do speak to each other. Nor are
the kind of speech variety usually called "dialects" (they're analogous
to biological populations that interbreed readily when they happen to
come into contact). The speakers of two different _languages_, however,
to the extent that they're not mutually intelligible (a concept nearly
as difficult to quantify in many cases as is reproductive isolation in
the wild, of course), have sufficient difficulty communicating using
them for us to speak of them (the languages, not the speakers) being
"communicatively isolated", to at least the same extent as wolves and
coyotes are reproductively isolated.

This gets stranger and stranger. Isn't it quite usual for people to
speak and communicate in more than one language and to encounter
languages that they know in varying degrees in their lives? I find
the situation you describe where people live in monoglot isolation
very alien.


Conversely, a fair degree of isolation, geographical or behavoural, is
necessary for one species/language to split into two.

Actually no. Not isolation - people can have contact and languages
can still split. I don't deny that separation is conducive to
differentiation between languages but it's neither a precondition nor
a guarantee as examples show (consider most of the widely spread
(geographically) Turkish languages which have not differentiated all
that greatly but the close - culturally and geographically insular
Scandinavian languages wich have differentiated (especially if you
contrast Nynorsk, Standard Swedish and Danish rather than cherry
picking dialects).


(in so far as a language being communicatively isolated
makes sense at all). I live in a very normal multilingual environment
where some of the languages I use bleed into each other constantly.
So unisolated are the varieties I use that occasionally I have to
introspect to check which one I'm using (happened the other day - I
thought I was having a conversation in Catalan and my interlocutor
thought we were speaking Rossellones). In what world is this not so?

In the same ideal world where members of different biological species
never interbreed, of course! If you'd had as much experience in field
biology as you have with languages, you'd know that your argument,
mutatis mutandis, is identical to the one everyone uses to show how
leaky the species concept is (more a problem in practise for flowering
plants than for mammals and birds, true, because of the promiscuous way
they reproduce).

What you say of species may be true but it's not to my point: I was
countering your characterisation of languages existing in
communicative isolation. They don't - at least at lot of the time and
if you look at examples of how they differentiate you see that your
picture doesn't really cut it.


In neither case are these rigorous definitions -- it's easy enough to
find circumstances where the model doesn't work, or even make
sense --
but they work well enough, enough of the time, to be extremely useful
idealisations, as much so today as in the past.

I'm surprised: I can make no more sense of your characterisation of
language as species than I can of Jens's. Idealisation is a very good
thing but not surely when it renders the object unrecognisable at all?

In that case, species are unrecognisable to you too, I presume? Fair
enough, that's another analogy between "species" and "language".

You presume wrongly - I said that from your idealisation _language_
was unrecognisable to me. You can see can't you that I'm not therefor
implied to have any such belief about whether _species_ can be
recognised from some idealisation of existing species? Good.


John.

.

Relevant Pages

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    ... The speakers of two different _languages_, however, to the extent that they're not mutually intelligible (a concept nearly as difficult to quantify in many cases as is reproductive isolation in the wild, of course), have sufficient difficulty communicating using them for us to speak of them being "communicatively isolated", to at least the same extent as wolves and coyotes are reproductively isolated. ... Conversely, a fair degree of isolation, geographical or behavoural, is necessary for one species/language to split into two. ... In the same ideal world where members of different biological species never interbreed, ...
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  • Re: If you were to design a language, how many vowels and consonants would you use?
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