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Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes)

From:J Y S Czhang <czhang23@...>
Date:Monday, May 10, 2004, 8:06
In a message dated 2004:05:09 12:20:27 PM, bpj@MELROCH.SE writes:

>At 21:46 8.5.2004, Ray Brown wrote: > >>On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 10:26 PM, Mark P. Line wrote: >>[snip] >> >>B. Philip Jonsson: >>An unambiguous language would not be amenable to change, and since human >>culture changes it would eventually be discarded. >> >> >>What makes you say that an unambiguous language would not be amenable >to change? > >Because ambiguity is what drives change in natural languages.
Also lexical stylistics - both sociocultural (arguably increasingly Technocultural) and individual. _Semantic_ ambiguity and lexical stylistics are the wild cards, Jokers, in the linguistics "deck" - the chaos/indeterminate extremes in the otherwise semi-orderly or complex entity/ies we call "language(s)." Like music, there seems to be varying "optimal balances" of predictability and surprise in language use (and abuse). How to broadly - and universally - define that "optimal balance" is one the perennial questions of linguistics. --- º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º ø,¸¸,ø º°`°º º°`°º ø,¸~-> Hanuman "Mister Sinister" Zhang, Sloth-Style Gungfu Typist - "the sloth is a chinese poet upsidedown" --- Jack Kerouac {1922-69} <A HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A> "Poems are sketches for existence." - Paul Celan "...make things/touch and radiate in the mind..." - Kenneth White "One thing foreigners, computers, & poets have in common is that they make unexpected linguistic associations." --- Jasia Reichardt "There is no reason for the poet to be limited to words, & in fact the poet is most poetic when inventing languages. Hence the concept of the poet as 'language designer'." --- O. B. Hardison, Jr. "Poetic creation still remains an act of perfect spiritual freedom. Poetry remakes & prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world." - Mircea Eliade "... upward into/the depths." - Tomas Transtromer "As webs come out of spiders, or breath forms in frozen air, worlds come out of us".—William Irwin Thompson, _Imaginary Landscape_ --- *DiDJiBuNgA!!* Hang Binary,baby...--- Hanuman "Stitch" Zhang, ManglaLanger (mangle + manga + lang) <A HREF="http://www.boheme-magazine.net">=> boheme-magazine.net</A> Language[s] change[s]: vowels shift, phonologies crash-&-burn, grammars leak, morpho-syntactics implode, lexico-semantics mutate, lexicons explode, orthographies reform, typographies blip-&-beep, slang flashes, stylistics warp... linguistic (R)evolutions mark each-&-every quantum leap... "Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" - John McWhorter, _The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language_ = maeci legosetplex caca plus debri ! prizerva. saalva. ricue. scopé-gomi plus riçyc'l ! = English translitteration of the above _djunk-lego_, "junk language": "Fight {Maquis/-machy} Linguistic Waste & Trash! Save, Salvage, Recover, (creatively)Scavenge-Found-Objects & Recycle!"