Re: THEORY: questions

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

>
> <<I disagree. In French for instance the distinction is optional and has
> to be
>
> done with adverbs. The demonstrative itself doesn't make the
> distinction.>>
>
>     I think for a lot of these you missed the point and you got bogged
> down
> with the actual words, which were used just to make it easier on
> Western
> linguists since the list was meant to be a simple list not a long, drawn
> out
> list of explanations.  So when it says "a proximal and distal
> demonstrative",
> it doesn't need to have an actual word for each (many Creoles only have
> one),
> but there needs to be some method in a language to indicate this thing
> and
> that thing, if pressed, even if it's some phrase like "The thing that is
> far
> from me" in those exact words.  Anyway, I think he should have used the
> word
> "strategy" a lot more than he did.
But then, the whole thing is trivial! Even in the most sketchy of pidgins, you
can do that. Even in a pidgin which would lack a word for 'far' (quite unlikely
already), you can use tone, gesture, borrow a word from another language, use
the word 'other' metaphorically (if the pidgin has it, but if it hasn't, is it
even a pidgin?), etc... Even the sign languages which used to be used by
American Indians for communication between tribes of different languages (or
for silent hunting) could do all what you're describing, and yet were far from
complete languages (they usually lacked a lot of abstract concepts). Contrary
to what you say, I didn't miss the point. On the contrary, I think that if you
take it as you explained (that to be a language, you have to have at least one
strategy to express all the points you describe, but the strategy can be
anything, even extremely long clauses or explanations), then the whole thing is
trivial. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's hard-wired to the human mind
to have an idea of distance (maybe not people blind from birth, but even then
you can have a little idea of distance from sound), to be able to make the
difference between oneself and the rest of the world (babies naturally discover
that during the first year of their life), to classify the world according to
categories (and thus to differentiate things within the categories according to
some characteristics - adjectives :)) -), a feeling of time passing, etc...
Thus any means of communication used by humans will have all the points really
necessary among the ones you listed, even the most sketchy one. Thus the whole
thing is trivial and meaningless.

Nevertheless, when it comes to conlang designing, I agree that the list is
useful. But it's only because conlangs don't generally appear because of a need
of communication, but because of an urge to create.

  Another thing: There is a way to
> show
> definiteness vs. indefiniteness in Latin.  It's kind of cheap, but
> it's
> there, nevertheless: Just use "hoc", etc.  It's a spatial deictic when
> there
> actually is a space between the speaker and the thing referred to, true,
> but
> what about in sentences like 'This girl of which you speak is of ill
> fame"?
> (I have these sentences stored away from my Latin book; many of them are
> like
> this.)  The point is that the use is a metaphorical extension to
> indicate
> that the subject is the same as the previous sentence, and not some new
> girl
> that's not a part of the conversation, and that is (if I'm not mistaken)
> the
> point of definiteness vs. indefiniteness, is it not?
But then again, it's trivial! Even the most sketchy pidgin can say "the girl
I've already talked about" (even without subclauses: e.g. "I talk before about
girl. Girl...").

>     Also, you raise an interesting point about the pronouns for three
> persons.  Because there's a different list in my historical linguistics
> book
> that tells common grammaticalizations in languages, and one of them is
> that
> demonstratives often become third person pronouns.  If so, then they
> clearly
> did not exist before.  And what about languages where pronoun use is
> being
> slowly taken over by the verb, like Spanish?  They just might
> disappear
> (well, probably not, but in theory).  So yeah, it seems like many
> languages
> could get on without one, though I'd like to see an example of one.
It can be argued that Japanese doesn't use pronouns, but nouns used
metaphorically to refer to the participants of the conversation. But I think it
would be only true if those nouns can also be used in other contexts. If not,
they probably have gained the status of pronouns.

> Latin,
> of course, has the third person coded into the verb, and demonstratives
> that
> can mean "this/that" or "this one/that one", so you could easily get
> by
> without one without having to repeat the noun.  I wonder how languages
> like
> this do it?
>     I'd argue that you don't need a word for "or".  It can be taken care
> of
> by intonation and the word "and".
Maybe. But still, by your own definition, it's a strategy of saying 'or', even
if the word itself doesn't exist :)) .

>     Anyway, I didn't mean to post the list as a personal affront to
> anyone,
> nor did I mean to put it forth as my own ideas.
I didn't take it like that. Sorry if it looked so. I was criticizing the list
itself, not the person who posted it. Of course, I'm only giving my opinion, I
may be wrong.

  So, I'm sorry if I
> insulted
> anyone.
>
At least you didn't insult me, and I hope you didn't take my answer as an
insult towards you, I just tried to give some constructive critics. The list
you gave is interesting (as long as you take it with a grain of salt) when you
only talk about constructed languages like ours. But as soon as you talk about
natural languages used for actual communication, even the most sketchy of
pidgins, the list is in my opinion trivial.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.