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Science Forum Index » Languages Forum » Properties of a cutting edge language?
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| Nathan Sanders |
 Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:02 pm |
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In article <fug2bt$5hg$00$2@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Quote: Nathan Sanders wrote:
In article <fufq7m$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).
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.
All spoken languages, including those used only in "civilized"
cultures?
Like I said, this is a perverse extension of the notion of "noble
savage". How could one rationally argue that, for example, English is
uncorrupted by civilization?
Quote: 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.
A common misconception from laymen. They think that because pros
aren't currently interested in some seemingly obvious concept (why, of
course some languages are simpler than others---how could they not
be?!), that throughout the entire history of the field, in the
hundreds of thousands of man-hours of research that have been done,
pros never took this supposedly obvious concept seriously, not for a
moment, and instead, have been completely ignoring it for some other
(certainly nefarious, exclusionarily elitist) reason.
A moment of rational thought reveals how insanely stupid this is, of
course.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/ |
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| benlizro@ihug.co.nz |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:02 pm |
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On Apr 21, 10:13 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
Quote: In article
915177ca-3b49-4066-87f9-4aff24fdc...@b64g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
blackhead <larryhar...@softhome.net> wrote:
On 19 Apr, 19:42, LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
wrote:
"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".
Cutting edge as in at the cutting edge of research into new, more
evolved ways of doing something more economically while retaining its
usefulness. Carbon fibre replacing steel because it's stronger and
lighter, phonetics replacing pictograms because of it's flexibility in
creating new words and far smaller basic symbols, modern English
ditching the masculinity/femininity/neutral qualities of old English,
m8 replacing mate and u replacing you in text messaging etc etc.
You do realize that "mate" > "m8" is exactly the *opposite* of the
path you original said was an example of "cutting edge" (assuming that
by "phonetics replacing pictograms", you actually meant "alphabets
replacing logographic writing").
Actually, "m8" looks more like a single step from an alphabet towards
a syllabary (assuming you also wrote "gr8" and "f8" and "st8" and so
on). But even if you were to save the odd keystroke this way,
consistent application of the principle would soon lead to much
greater difficulties. A functioning syllabary for English would
require thousands of symbols, and enormously increase the learning
task, even if it made our books shorter. And there would be a trade-
off similar to what Nathan has been describing in the phonological
domain, since with thousands of different characters the visual
recognition of each one becomes more difficult than with just dozens.
Ross Clark |
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| Nathan Sanders |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:18 pm |
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In article <fug30k$7ha$03$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Quote: Nathan Sanders wrote:
(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.)
I wittnessed a realistic scenario, when someone tried to run for a student's
parliament (proportional representation) as a one-person "party". He was
rejected on the ground that the regulation said: "a party consists of
students", so they said it had to be at least two, which I feel was not the
intention of the author of the regulation.
Regulations are much like mathematical language, where you can't (and
shouldn't) rely on pragmatics to get your meanings across. If you
want a party to be able to consist of a single student, that needs to
be explicitly mentioned in the regulations.
Quote: 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?
Why do you insist on measuring?
I don't! You're the one who insists that there is such a thing as
"less/more capable", rather than just simply "capable".
"Less" and "more" are measures. If A is "less capable" than B of
doing something, then you must have some metric in mind to warrant the
use of "less".
If you don't have such a metric, then how can you be certain that it
is indeed "less", rather than "more" or "equally" (or more
appropriately when dealing with linguistic phenomena, "none of the
above")?
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/ |
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| Nathan Sanders |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:13 pm |
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In article
<915177ca-3b49-4066-87f9-4aff24fdc4c5@b64g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
blackhead <larryharson@softhome.net> wrote:
Quote: On 19 Apr, 19:42, LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
wrote:
"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".
Cutting edge as in at the cutting edge of research into new, more
evolved ways of doing something more economically while retaining its
usefulness. Carbon fibre replacing steel because it's stronger and
lighter, phonetics replacing pictograms because of it's flexibility in
creating new words and far smaller basic symbols, modern English
ditching the masculinity/femininity/neutral qualities of old English,
m8 replacing mate and u replacing you in text messaging etc etc.
You do realize that "mate" > "m8" is exactly the *opposite* of the
path you original said was an example of "cutting edge" (assuming that
by "phonetics replacing pictograms", you actually meant "alphabets
replacing logographic writing").
So which is better, an alphabet (a "phonetic" writing system) or a
logographic writing system ("pictograms")? Well, neither one; they
both have pros and cons, and there is no objective measurement that
makes one type of writing holistically "better" for representing human
language than another (in the general case; obviously, one or the
other could be more useful in very particular circumstances, such as
input via a computer keyboard).
(See Joachim, this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about!)
Quote: blackhead> if all the best linguistists got together and created
blackhead> one?
Why would they do that? Why would that interest them?
Minimising effort, maximising functionality hence making a world a
better place for people.
To see why simple effort minimization isn't sufficient, consider the
extreme case of absolute effort minimization. Imagine we reduce
effort completely, no memorizing large sets of phonemes, no difficult
consonants, just open your mouth and speak a single vowel, [a].
Obviously, this would cause problems with communication. We would
have a lot of ambiguity, because the functional load of [a] would be
enormous.
So languages make use of more phonemes, in order to make individual
words more distinctive from each other. But the more phonemes they
have, the more effort that is required on the part of the speaker to
learn them, know when to use them, and to make them sound as different
from each other as possible.
Again consider the other extreme, where every morpheme has its own
unique phoneme. But even with a conservative lexicon of about 10,000
morphemes, that's 10,000 phonemes! You'd have to make use of absurdly
fine-grained distinctions, such as 10-way contrasts in vowel length
(rather than the maximal two or three found in real human languages).
So languages make use of lots of phonemes, but not too many. Where do
they range? Roughly about an order of magnitude (around 10 at a
minimum and around 100 at a maximum). But there is not perfect number
of phonemes, because every extra phoneme increases the burden on the
speaker, while every missing phoneme increases the burden on the
listener.
It's a never-ending game of tug-of-war, with effort minimization in
direct competition with perceptual distinctiveness. Lots of ink has
been spilled on this very topic (it's a central issue in my own
research), and there simply is no optimum balance, because every case
of effort simplification of an existing linguistic phenomenon leads to
some loss of perceptual distinctiveness, and likewise, every case of
perceptual enhancement of some existing linguistic phenomenon leads to
some sort of increased effort.
Anything significant that doesn't fit into that mold (i.e., anything
that is both articulatorily easier *and* perceptually distinctive)
would have been quickly incorporated into human language 100,000 years
ago. Why wouldn't it have been?
As long as human beings have the brains they do, the ears they do, and
the vocal tracts they do, spoken human language will never evolve to
something fundamentally different, because it has already long since
been optimized for the bodies we currently have.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/ |
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| Peter T. Daniels |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:57 pm |
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On Apr 20, 11:49 pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Quote: Nathan Sanders wrote:
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?
Why do you insist on measuring?
I don't! You're the one who insists that there is such a thing as
"less/more capable", rather than just simply "capable".
"Less" and "more" are measures. If A is "less capable" than B of
doing something, then you must have some metric in mind to warrant the
use of "less".
If you don't have such a metric, then how can you be certain that it
is indeed "less", rather than "more" or "equally" (or more
appropriately when dealing with linguistic phenomena, "none of the
above")?
Indeed this sub-discussion was started by someone saying that all languages
were "equally capable" at expressing ideas.
Why are you willing to accept this claim (not backed by metrics), but not
Because no one has found a counterexample
Quote: willing to accept the claim that one language might be more capable to
express a certain idea than another (not backed by metrics either).
Because no one has found an example
Quote: I understand why you don't want to accept the second claim. But then the
first claim is unacceptable as well.
The same argument holds for "complexity of languages". It doesn't help if
linguists answer a claim like "language A is more complex than language B"
with the statement "no, all languages are equally complex". Yet that's the
typical linguist answer I recall from this group.
Because there's no evidence otherwise |
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| Peter T. Daniels |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:59 pm |
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On Apr 20, 11:30 pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Quote: Harlan Messinger wrote:
Joachim Pense wrote:
Harlan Messinger wrote:
Joachim Pense wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:
In article <fudk76$eh8$0...@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <s...@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.
"Capable" is not necessarily black or white, but "capable of expressing
such-and-such" is an example of black or white. Either you can express
an idea in language X or you can't.
I'm not talking about "capable", I'm talking about "more". Can't you
say "Peter is more able to sing than Paul", meaning that he's a better
singer?
No.
You can say that Jane is better at singing than Mary.
But as long as both have intact, functioning vocal apparatus, they are
equally able to sing.
If one of them doesn't, then she is unable -- not less able. |
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| LEE Sau Dan |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:15 pm |
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Quote: "blackhead" == blackhead <larryharson@softhome.net> writes:
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> Cutting edge as in at the cutting edge of research into
blackhead> new, more evolved ways of doing something more
blackhead> economically while retaining its usefulness.
The question is: why should linguists invent a new way of expressing
ideas using speech sounds or written symbols?
How about: What is "cutting edge in theology"? Are they concerned
with more ecnomonically ways of creating a new God?
blackhead> Carbon fibre replacing steel because it's stronger and
blackhead> lighter,
But way more expensive to produce.
blackhead> phonetics replacing pictograms because of it's
blackhead> flexibility in creating new words and far smaller basic
blackhead> symbols,
But they fail more miserable due to regional differences, both in the
dimensions of space and time. Why do you still spell "know" with a
leading "k"?
blackhead> modern English ditching the
blackhead> masculinity/femininity/neutral qualities of old
blackhead> English,
But still haven't ditched the "-s" on the 3p sg. present tense, nor
the compulsory marking of plurality.
blackhead> if all the best linguistists got together and created
blackhead> one?
Will theologists get together and create a brand new God?
Quote: Why would they do that? Why would that interest them?
blackhead> Minimising effort, maximising functionality hence
blackhead> making a world a better place for people.
It involves even more effort to make all people learn that new
language. So, what's the point? Look at the failed experiment called
Esperanto. Even the most inflated figures say there are only 5
million Esperanto speakers worldwide. How many Cantonese are there
worldwide?
blackhead> Which language today most closely approaches this?
Quote:
There is no answer to questions that are not well formulated.
blackhead> I haven't formulated the question as you would have
blackhead> liked, but with respect, it has been formulated enough
blackhead> for other people in the thread to have enabled them to
blackhead> give some very interesting, knowledgeable
blackhead> replies.
All other replies say the same thing as I do: your question is
meaningless.
--
Lee Sau Dan §õ¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee |
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| Nathan Sanders |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:46 pm |
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In article
<9a8a3563-55bf-46ca-b388-b6fb98bce844@p39g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
"benlizro@ihug.co.nz" <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
Quote: On Apr 21, 10:13 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
In article
915177ca-3b49-4066-87f9-4aff24fdc...@b64g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
blackhead <larryhar...@softhome.net> wrote:
On 19 Apr, 19:42, LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
wrote:
"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".
Cutting edge as in at the cutting edge of research into new, more
evolved ways of doing something more economically while retaining its
usefulness. Carbon fibre replacing steel because it's stronger and
lighter, phonetics replacing pictograms because of it's flexibility in
creating new words and far smaller basic symbols, modern English
ditching the masculinity/femininity/neutral qualities of old English,
m8 replacing mate and u replacing you in text messaging etc etc.
You do realize that "mate" > "m8" is exactly the *opposite* of the
path you original said was an example of "cutting edge" (assuming that
by "phonetics replacing pictograms", you actually meant "alphabets
replacing logographic writing").
Actually, "m8" looks more like a single step from an alphabet towards
a syllabary (assuming you also wrote "gr8" and "f8" and "st8" and so
on).
You're right; I over-simplified the issue here. I think the basic
idea still holds, since the chief concern is the number of symbols
used in the writing system.
Quote: But even if you were to save the odd keystroke this way,
consistent application of the principle would soon lead to much
greater difficulties. A functioning syllabary for English would
require thousands of symbols, and enormously increase the learning
task, even if it made our books shorter. And there would be a trade-
off similar to what Nathan has been describing in the phonological
domain, since with thousands of different characters the visual
recognition of each one becomes more difficult than with just dozens.
Exactly.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/ |
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| Joachim Pense |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:30 pm |
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Harlan Messinger wrote:
Quote: Joachim Pense wrote:
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.
"Capable" is not necessarily black or white, but "capable of expressing
such-and-such" is an example of black or white. Either you can express
an idea in language X or you can't.
I'm not talking about "capable", I'm talking about "more". Can't you
say "Peter is more able to sing than Paul", meaning that he's a better
singer?
Joachim |
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| Joachim Pense |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:49 pm |
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Nathan Sanders wrote:
Quote:
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?
Why do you insist on measuring?
I don't! You're the one who insists that there is such a thing as
"less/more capable", rather than just simply "capable".
"Less" and "more" are measures. If A is "less capable" than B of
doing something, then you must have some metric in mind to warrant the
use of "less".
If you don't have such a metric, then how can you be certain that it
is indeed "less", rather than "more" or "equally" (or more
appropriately when dealing with linguistic phenomena, "none of the
above")?
Indeed this sub-discussion was started by someone saying that all languages
were "equally capable" at expressing ideas.
Why are you willing to accept this claim (not backed by metrics), but not
willing to accept the claim that one language might be more capable to
express a certain idea than another (not backed by metrics either).
I understand why you don't want to accept the second claim. But then the
first claim is unacceptable as well.
The same argument holds for "complexity of languages". It doesn't help if
linguists answer a claim like "language A is more complex than language B"
with the statement "no, all languages are equally complex". Yet that's the
typical linguist answer I recall from this group.
Joachim |
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| Nathan Sanders |
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:34 pm |
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In article <fuh2pn$7mv$01$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Quote: Nathan Sanders wrote:
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?
Why do you insist on measuring?
I don't! You're the one who insists that there is such a thing as
"less/more capable", rather than just simply "capable".
"Less" and "more" are measures. If A is "less capable" than B of
doing something, then you must have some metric in mind to warrant the
use of "less".
If you don't have such a metric, then how can you be certain that it
is indeed "less", rather than "more" or "equally" (or more
appropriately when dealing with linguistic phenomena, "none of the
above")?
Indeed this sub-discussion was started by someone saying that all languages
were "equally capable" at expressing ideas.
Why are you willing to accept this claim (not backed by metrics), but not
willing to accept the claim that one language might be more capable to
express a certain idea than another (not backed by metrics either).
Because equality is the usual the null hypothesis.
This means that a claim of "more/less" is more egregious than a claim
of "equality" and needs to be more aggressively challenged.
But as you note, it's still an issue of measurement, and personally, I
prefer to say that languages are "incomparable" for certain
properties, and I do generally try to be careful to express it that
way.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/ |
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| Jens S. Larsen |
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:30 am |
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Joachim Pense:
Quote: Jens S. Larsen wrote:
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".
I don't know the theories well enough; what the theoreticians seem to say
e.g. here is not that human language is perfect, but rather that human
language is their subject of study, and so they don't care about "another
language".
As far as we know, natural language fits the human brain perfectly
already, so why should we go on searching for a more perfect language?
Perhaps in a classroom, something like Esperanto is generally easier
to deal with than other dialects of Human, but at the end of the day
expressive capacity depends on the individual speaker, not the names
of his language. What you can say depends on the words you know, not
on the grammar. And the words don't belong to the language, they
belong to the speaker.
Quote: 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."
Nobody is questioning the different appropriateness of different types
of speech and writing in different situations; but that's just games
we set up independent of any inherent qualities of language. Neither
is anyone questioning that you can do more with speaking and writing
than with speaking alone. It's hardly even a question of
communication; it's about whether you can express something in
English, but not in German, not because of your personal exposure or
attitude to the two languages, but because of... well, I don't know
what, something else.
But in order to compare languages, you have to establish that there
are more than one. How do you know that what we commonly know as the
English and the German language, aren't just dialects of one and the
same language called Human?
Jens S. Larsen |
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| blackhead |
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:19 am |
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On 21 Apr, 01:46, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
Quote: In article
9a8a3563-55bf-46ca-b388-b6fb98bce...@p39g2000prm.googlegroups.com>,
"benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
On Apr 21, 10:13 am, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
In article
915177ca-3b49-4066-87f9-4aff24fdc...@b64g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
blackhead <larryhar...@softhome.net> wrote:
On 19 Apr, 19:42, LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
wrote:
"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".
Cutting edge as in at the cutting edge of research into new, more
evolved ways of doing something more economically while retaining its
usefulness. Carbon fibre replacing steel because it's stronger and
lighter, phonetics replacing pictograms because of it's flexibility in
creating new words and far smaller basic symbols, modern English
ditching the masculinity/femininity/neutral qualities of old English,
m8 replacing mate and u replacing you in text messaging etc etc.
You do realize that "mate" > "m8" is exactly the *opposite* of the
path you original said was an example of "cutting edge" (assuming that
by "phonetics replacing pictograms", you actually meant "alphabets
replacing logographic writing").
Actually, "m8" looks more like a single step from an alphabet towards
a syllabary (assuming you also wrote "gr8" and "f8" and "st8" and so
on).
You're right; I over-simplified the issue here. I think the basic
idea still holds, since the chief concern is the number of symbols
used in the writing system.
But even if you were to save the odd keystroke this way,
consistent application of the principle would soon lead to much
greater difficulties. A functioning syllabary for English would
require thousands of symbols, and enormously increase the learning
task, even if it made our books shorter. And there would be a trade-
off similar to what Nathan has been describing in the phonological
domain, since with thousands of different characters the visual
recognition of each one becomes more difficult than with just dozens.
Exactly.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams Collegehttp://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Yes, I agree. But I'm not suggesting that new symbols are being
created for syllables, hence creating a syllabary. Instead, symbols
that are not part of the phonetic alphabet but are recognised as being
pronounced a certain way in a different alphabet are being added to
the phonetic alphabet to simplify language. The usefulness of already
existing symbols is being extended; Anyone that can read English and
is familiar with numbers will know what l8 means without being
formally taught to do so. I agree that this does complicate things in
some areas, just as "tion" is expressed as "shun" and its spelling
bears no resemblance to its current pronounciation, even though it was
originally pronounced "tion". |
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| blackhead |
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:39 am |
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On 21 Apr, 05:34, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:
Quote: In article <fuh2pn$7mv$0...@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Nathan Sanders wrote:
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?
Why do you insist on measuring?
I don't! You're the one who insists that there is such a thing as
"less/more capable", rather than just simply "capable".
"Less" and "more" are measures. If A is "less capable" than B of
doing something, then you must have some metric in mind to warrant the
use of "less".
If you don't have such a metric, then how can you be certain that it
is indeed "less", rather than "more" or "equally" (or more
appropriately when dealing with linguistic phenomena, "none of the
above")?
Indeed this sub-discussion was started by someone saying that all languages
were "equally capable" at expressing ideas.
Why are you willing to accept this claim (not backed by metrics), but not
willing to accept the claim that one language might be more capable to
express a certain idea than another (not backed by metrics either).
Because equality is the usual the null hypothesis.
This means that a claim of "more/less" is more egregious than a claim
of "equality" and needs to be more aggressively challenged.
But as you note, it's still an issue of measurement, and personally, I
prefer to say that languages are "incomparable" for certain
properties, and I do generally try to be careful to express it that
way.
So is the language of Apes equal to that of humans in the UK, in your
view, because they can't be compared and so are by default equal?
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| Paul J Kriha |
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:44 am |
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"Joachim Pense" <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote in message news:fuf54p$bpu$02$1@news.t-online.com...
Quote: Nathan Sanders wrote:
[...]
Quote: 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?
The difference I have in mind is probably situated more on the pragmatical
level.
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).
Marketing executive, physicist, and a mathematician travel by
train during their visit in Australia. The executive looks out of
the window and says: "Look the sheep in Australia are all white."
The physicist says: "At least some sheep in Australia are white."
The mathematician also looks out of the window and says:
"Some sheep in Australia are white on at least one side."
pjk
Quote: 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.
Joachim |
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