Re: Who castrated Esperanto?

António Marques:

Jens S. Larsen wrote:
António Marques:
Jens S. Larsen wrote:
different paradigms. That's a
rather serious matter within natural science.
Why?
Puts things upside down and people up against each other.
And why do you think that doesn't happen elsewhere?
It happens, but not that often.

Why do you think it doesn't happen that often?

It's probably more exact to say that it happens from time to time in
the other sciences, but perpetually in linguistics. There's no
discussion whether, for instance, biology is a social or a natural
science. But such fundamental questions are still very controversial
within linguistics, and this one can be traced back a hundred years or
more.


You might as well talk about an E-typology
which would comprise features that are shared between languages
spoken in countries whose names begin with an E: England, Eritrea and
Ecuador, dismissing Scotland, Somalia and Columbia, for instance.

And *if* I had any reason to talk about such a thing, and *if* those
languages did share those features, what would be wrong with it?

Nothing, unless you claim it's a theoretically interesting construct.


[...]
They wanted a language with a lexicon that mimicked not Russian
as such, but the bulk of borrowings into Russian.
And I don't think many of them weren't familiar with french.
Considering the hassle about the definite article during the first
years, probably a sizeable part of them had scarce knowledge of
foreign languages.

Then how did they tell the borrowings from the rest of the vocabulary?

There are such things as dictionaries of foreign words and phrases.
Besides, it's not difficult to identify a foreign layer in one's own
language, even no training in foreign languages whatsoever. For
instance, Russian verbs in -irovat' can mostly be traced to German
verbs in -ieren, which is the usual way of importing a verb from a
Romance language. There's also spelling; for instance all words with
"Y" in German or "F" in Russian are imported.

Jens S. Larsen
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Who castrated Esperanto?
    ... rather serious matter within natural science. ... languages did share those features, what would be wrong with it? ... it's not difficult to identify a foreign layer in one's own ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Imperial oppression
    ... This piece appears to be addressed to biological scientists. ... dozens if not hundreds of different languages. ... something that the Anglophone science community is, at best, unaware ... The position of English in the ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Aaron Slomans "The Irrelevance of Turing Machines to AI" article
    ... >> David, we are accountable for our behaviour every day. ... the seeds of science in our folk psychology - we use yes and no (cf. ... accounting) and science. ... of natural languages non-truth-functional. ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: Imperial oppression
    ... geography) in dozens if not hundreds of different languages. ... Which journals about natural science in other languages than English ... teaching and learning of English around the world. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Auckland to Sydney on the Diamond Princess
    ... Roberto, you poor, manic and somewhat irrational seasoned traveller - ... possibly have not visited as many countries as you have I am also ... and possibly said that in a number of different languages. ...
    (rec.travel.cruises)