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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

Adam Funk wrote:
On 2008-04-19, Harlan Messinger wrote:

Esperanto can do more than natural languages. It can do different
things. It is a language it in its own right, not an imitation of
other languages.
??!! It was consciously created with a vocabulary representing an
assortment of European languages and it was given a regularized grammar
consisting of paradigms also imported from a variety of European
languages, right down to the German accusative -n. By any definition of
"imitation", it most certainly is one.

I don't doubt that it can do what any natural language does, and that
it's easy to learn, but what "more" can it do that natural languages
can't?


It slices, dices, and cleans baked-on grease in a snap.

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?

Joachim Pense wrote:
Peter T. Daniels wrote:

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.

Oh, then English is different from German here - or is it my idiolect? When
I say "Peter ist gleich fähig zu singen wie Paul", ("Peter is equally
capable of singing as Paul" I imply that the capabilities are comparable by
a metric, and in this case, the values are equal.

It wouldn't occur to me to use "able" or "capable" in English at all for
such a comparison. Either "Peter sings as well as Paul" or "Peter
doesn't sing as well as Paul".-

On 21 Apr, 01:46, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:



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.

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.

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".

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

Jens S. Larsen wrote:
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?

Because 'human language' is, in part, a set defined by enumerating known
elements of it, and two of those enumerated are 'english' and 'german'.

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:02:37 -0400: Harlan Messinger
hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net>: in sci.lang:

Consulting linguists will not be adequate; users will
have to be consulted first.  I know of no language in
which I would be able to express "everything".

What can't you express in English?

Practical questions from nl>en fellow translators indicated that a lot
of things that can be said in Dutch is difficult to express in
English. The same is true in the opposite direction.

On 21 Apr, 05:34, Nathan Sanders <nsand...@williams.edu> wrote:

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?

What would be the properties of a cutting edge language if all the
best linguistists got together and created one?
Which language today most closely approaches this?

Thanks

On Apr 19, 8:15=A0am, blackhead <larryhar...@softhome.net> wrote:
What would be the properties of a cutting edge language if all the
best linguistists got together and created one?
Which language today most closely approaches this?

Thanks

What is a cutting edge language?
All languages are equally capable of expressing the speakers ideas. I
haven't seen any example of a created language that comes near to what
a 'natural' language can do (maybe esperanto).

John

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.

In article <fuf54p$bpu$02$1@news.t-online.com>,
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:

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.

No, we have the concept, too. You just described it using English!
("arbitrary number of objects"), so clearly the concept is capable of
being expressed.

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.

Sure, those are the literal meanings.

But number has some well-known pragmatic properties (covered by
Grice's Maxim of Quantity) that you are overlooking.

Consider English "there are three books on the table". This sentence
is literally true even if I know that there are in fact four books,
because I can go count the three books are on the table. (I didn't
say "only three"!)

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?