Re: The monumental stupidity of PIE theorists further illustrated

On Jul 27, 9:24 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 27, 8:52 am, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:





On Jul 26, 4:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 26, 2:07 pm, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jul 26, 12:38 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 26, 9:26 am, analys...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
You are of course colossally wrong because I am conscious of all three
languages I speak and in the case of English - I speak two varieties -
one to Westerners and another to South Asians.

You do not know the truth about yourself. Your language is only under
your conscious control when you are planning in advance what you
intend to say, and such occasions are very rare.

Wrong again:

Imagine the following occasions:

(1) buying groceries
(2) talking to a small child
(3) helping a poor-speaker of English with directions
(4) talking to inner city kids
(5) giving some information over the phone (name, CC number etc.)
(6) a classroom lecture
(7) acting in a broadway play
(8) Making a wedding vow (taken from Dylan)

Is the speaker's inner awareness of his language and his language
itself going to be the same in all cases (of course once he is "in
stride" in each situation he might speak appropriately without being
aware of it)?

Only (1), (2), and probably (4) (I can only imagine your attitude
toward "inner city kids") are ordinary conversation. If by "lecture"
you mean reading your prepared text, then none of (5), (6), (7), or
(8) is "speaking" at all; they are reciting prepared, written
information; they are a uses of written language. So yes, if you
discover that you are engaging with a limited-English-speaker, you
monitor your words in advance, but you probably don't know how to mesh
your attempts at simplification with their native language, so you
might well do worse than if you didn't simply speak a little more
slowly.

Missed my point completely - I wasn't merely trying point out we
change our vocabulary and complexity of grammatical constructs to suit
the occasion, we also change the clarity of articulation under
different circumstances.

AND "WE" DO NOT DO THAT CONSCIOUSLY. WE DO THAT UNCONSCIOUSLY.

I recently heard somebody ask for what sounded to me as "mulverets"
and the deli owner understood him and gave him Marlboro lights.

Joe Pesci in "My Cousin Vinny" might have blithely gone on to create a
"sound change" for "youths" until challenged by the judge - "whats a
yoot"?  and he gets back with a beautifully articulated "Youdhz".

No, he did not "create a sound change." He said it in his perfectly
ordinary New York regional accent (the notion of a "Brooklyn accent"
is a Hollywood myth.)

Fred Gwynne, as the judge, pretended not to understand the word,
making a sociolinguistic point: that regional dialect is a marker of
solidarity and difference.

So get back to my version of socio-linguistics (I give not two hoots
what that old coot Labov has said or not said) -

In England you could be prosecuted for libel. If you "don't care," why
did you invoke him earlier?

upper class speakers
mostly move in mileus where "upper class" i.e., "standard"
articulation is expected and unconsciously enforced by peer
expectations.  They are thus able to resist or even perhaps even
reverse reductive language changes constantly emanating from the
masses.

At least you have finally got the "unconsciously" bit, but you are
completely wrong about "resist" and "reverse." (Plus you continue
bullshitting about "reductive.") When Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
first (re)entered the public scene five or so years ago -- with an
appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors -- her accent was pure old-
style upper-class New York. Since then she has become quite active in
politics (including as a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton), and her
accent has become a quite ordinary General American with a tinge of
New York.

Lower class folks, even if they had been taught proper articulation in
school gradually either forget it or reserve it only for solemn
occasions because they mostly move in circles where proper
articulation is not required and is perhaps even derided by their
peers.

This is a bizarre mixture of class superiority bull***, your own
fantasies about language, and a correct observation: that different
styles are appropriate in different contexts.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Let me put it in a way so as not evoke your chracteristic petulance.

different styles (defined by the nature of vocabulary, complexity of
the subset of grammatical possibilies used, strictness of adherence to
grammatical rules, clarity of articulation and perhaps others) are
appropriate in different contexts.

These different contexts (which are suffiicently distinct from each
other in large speech communities) differ in their tendency to
generate language change. Some contexts are reductive of language
(not merely sounds) some are preservative and some are fortitive. A
language evolves according with the ebb and flow of the influentiality
of these different contexts.
.

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