In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.

I still don't buy this linguist mantra.

As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that), then why
wouldn't you buy it?

What sort of idea are you thinking of that a speaker would understand
but not be able to express in their native language?

Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.

I still don't buy this linguist mantra.

As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that),

then why wouldn't you buy it?

If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you don't
in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.

"blackhead" writes:
blackhead> What would be the properties of a cutting edge
blackhead> language if all the best linguistists got together
blackhead> and created one?

Why would they do that? Why would that interest them?

In article <fuekce$att$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.

I still don't buy this linguist mantra.

As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that),

(Oops, I of course meant something more like "I've never heard of a
language without those abilities"!)

then why wouldn't you buy it?

If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you
don't in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.

Either you can express an idea, or you cannot. Why does it matter how
many morphemes happen to be used to express it?

In article <fuekce$att$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.

I still don't buy this linguist mantra.

As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that),

(Oops, I of course meant something more like "I've never heard of a
language without those abilities"!)

then why wouldn't you buy it?

If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you
don't in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.

However, if you don't think these count as instances of "less
capable", then you must have a different definition of circumlocution,
one not based on morpheme count, and hopefully one that other people
could also use to objectively measure the relative capability of two
languages at expressing a given concept, coming up with the same
conclusions that you do.

If that's the case, then what is your definition? Phoneme count?
Length of actual time it takes to express a concept? Number of
neurons that fire while expressing the concept?

Now, if you can't come up with a reasonably precise, objective
definition, then just give a sufficient number of examples to get the
general idea across. What specific kind of concepts are you thinking
of that one language is "more capable" of expressing than another
language? Which particular languages and concepts out in the real
world demonstrate your idea?

Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.
I still don't buy this linguist mantra.
As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that), then why
wouldn't you buy it?

If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you don't
in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.

What sort of idea are you thinking of that a speaker would understand
but not be able to express in their native language?


I feel that "not able" is not what we are talking about here.

Joachim Pense wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.
I still don't buy this linguist mantra.
As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that), then why
wouldn't you buy it?

If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you
don't in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.

No it isn't. It's more capable of expressing it *tersely*.


What sort of idea are you thinking of that a speaker would understand
but not be able to express in their native language?


I feel that "not able" is not what we are talking about here.

"Capable" = "able".

Nathan Sanders wrote:
In article <fufq7m$mfl$0...@news.t-online.com>,
 Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

I also perceive a "noble wild" type of attitude towards natural language
- as in, maybe: "languages are developed by humans in unconcious social
processes, which makes those languages sort of holy; therefore, it is
inappropriate to compare them with regard to their usability as tools of
communication of ideas, attidudes, social status, etc."

It has nothing to do with that (the usual term in English is "noble
savage", which is concerned with the supposed uncorrupted nature of
"uncivilized" cultures; it would be somewhat perverse to extend this
concept to *all* natural languages, since it completely misses to
civilized/uncivilized dichotomy inherent to the concept).

But that's the point: The idea seems to be that spoken language (which by
many seems to be valued by a tradition of linguists as higher than
written/educated language) is in some way uncorrupted by civilisation.

The real "attitude" at work here is that the kinds of comparisons
laymen are so obsessed with (which language is "simplest", "easiest",
"relative capability of expressing concept X") can't be made in an
objective, systematic way, and if it isn't objective and systematic,
scientists don't generally care about it.

My feeling is that the pros don't try seriously.

"blackhead" == blackhead <larryhar...@softhome.net> writes:

blackhead> What would be the properties of a cutting edge language

Could you first define what a "cutting edge language" means? I know
what "cutting edge" means when it is used to qualify "technology",
"invention", etc., not "language".

blackhead> if all the best linguistists got together and created
blackhead> one?

Why would they do that? Why would that interest them?

blackhead> Which language today most closely approaches this?

There is no answer to questions that are not well formulated.

--
Lee Sau Dan $BM{<iFX(B ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page:http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

If there were different languages to begin with, it might be
interesting to make something better. But the best available theories
tell us that human language as such is perfect, so you have to use
theories that are anything than cutting-edge to motivate you to devise
"another language".

In Japanese, I have the concept of an arbitrary number of objects. In
English, I don't have that concept, I only have singular and plural.

When I say: "There are books on the table", I imply that there are at least
two of them. The corresponding sentence in Japanese doesnt imply that, it
could be one single book.

I could of course say "There is at least one book on the table", but that's
highly unnatural. It doesn't sound like an acceptable sentence in most
speech situations (except maybe in court, or in Maths).

And pragmatically, it is certainly different from the Japanese example,
because you give the possibility that there is only one book a special
mention which you don't give in Japanese.

I also perceive a "noble wild" type of attitude towards natural language -
as in, maybe: "languages are developed by humans in unconcious social
processes, which makes those languages sort of holy; therefore, it is
inappropriate to compare them with regard to their usability as tools of
communication of ideas, attidudes, social status, etc."

In article <fufq7m$mfl$01$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

I also perceive a "noble wild" type of attitude towards natural language
- as in, maybe: "languages are developed by humans in unconcious social
processes, which makes those languages sort of holy; therefore, it is
inappropriate to compare them with regard to their usability as tools of
communication of ideas, attidudes, social status, etc."

It has nothing to do with that (the usual term in English is "noble
savage", which is concerned with the supposed uncorrupted nature of
"uncivilized" cultures; it would be somewhat perverse to extend this
concept to *all* natural languages, since it completely misses to
civilized/uncivilized dichotomy inherent to the concept).

The real "attitude" at work here is that the kinds of comparisons
laymen are so obsessed with (which language is "simplest", "easiest",
"relative capability of expressing concept X") can't be made in an
objective, systematic way, and if it isn't objective and systematic,
scientists don't generally care about it.

(I'm having trouble coming up with a realistic scenario in which you
would even need such a sentence. When would you have sufficient
knowledge of a table to know for sure that it certainly has one book
on it, but not enough knowledge to know whether or not there are any
others? Perhaps a book sale in a crowded room, and you can see just
the very corner of table through the crowd, and there is one book in
your field of view, but just five minutes ago, you saw multiple books.
This seems rather contrived.)

And pragmatically, it is certainly different from the Japanese example,
because you give the possibility that there is only one book a special
mention which you don't give in Japanese.

As a native English speaker, I don't feel any special emphasis on a
special book (especially if you use indefinite "a" rather than "one").

And I still don't have a sense of how you *measure* any of this on a
scale that let's you say English is "less" capable of expressing this
concept than Japanese is. Both languages can express the concept (and
as a native speaker of English, I can attest to the "naturalness" of
various ways of expressing it). So, what is the objectively
measurable difference corresponding to this supposed scale of
capability of expression?

Harlan Messinger wrote:

Joachim Pense wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:

In article <fudk76$eh8$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

bulkington63 wrote:

All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas.
I still don't buy this linguist mantra.
As long as a language has the ability to form circumlocutions and
neologisms (and I've never heard of a language like that), then why
wouldn't you buy it?
If you need a circumlocution to express an idea in language A, and you
don't in language B, then B is more capable to express the idea than A.
No it isn't. It's more capable of expressing it *tersely*.

What sort of idea are you thinking of that a speaker would understand
but not be able to express in their native language?

I feel that "not able" is not what we are talking about here.
"Capable" = "able".

but if you say "more capable", you talk about comparing things by degree,
not about black or white.