Re: Conlanging and Natlangs

AcadonBot wrote:

> > AcadonBot wrote:
> >  >Yet IMO conlanging is going on at all times in the world>of natural
> language. People coin new slang terms
> > constantly,>and new inventions like "radar" and "modems" produce new>words
> than may become quite common. All this may
> > not>be serious stuff. Some is clearly for fun -- take "Jabberwocky">-- not
> without its influence on the English
> > language.>>Natural languages are "under construction"
> constantly.>Moreover, the leading "natlangs" are all to some
> > extent the>result of conscious efforts to define norms and establish>a
> common vocabulary.
> >
> > There are a couple confusions here:
> >
> > (1) "Languages", as such, do not exist. When we say we are speaking
> > English, what we are really saying is that the kinds of speech we are
> using
> > are similar enough to allow mutual intelligibility.  In fact, we all speak
> > slightly differently, with our own forms of language that themselves are
> > different from one point in time to another.
>
> You have redefined away the word "language." We could similarly
> redefine away the "weather," species of animals, categories of things,
> etc. "Books" as such do not exist....  etc.
Metaphysically, I am no Platonist, and consequently actually agree that "books"
as such do not exist.  But this is (a) highly theoretical, and (b) neither here nor
there for our current discussion.

The point is whether, in a more practical sense, one can objectively describe
something as a language.  For example, until Standard German leveled out most
of the German dialects, there was a continuum spanning Central Europe from
Austria to the Netherlands.  No two adjacent dialects along that continuum were
wholly unintelligible from one another, but the two dialect forms at the end of the
chain were completely unintelligible.  I use this analogy to show that there is in
fact a much greater complexity to 'languages' than you seemed to be acknowledging.
What I was trying to explain is that e.g. the things we call 'German' and 'French' are in
reality just names, which have no inherent reality beyond the fact that people believe
they have reality, because every speaker of French and German and any standardized
language is in reality not speaking what we call 'German' or 'French', but a variety of
speech which varies however widely or subtly from that standard.

In my original letter, the reason I said 'languages' don't exist is precisely because
of this arbitrariness.  We use this term 'language', but it has no nonarbitrary basis
in the real world.  It's just a useful term for referring to standard languages, and
has little more meaning.  This is important because what you said in your original
post was 'natural languages', not 'standard languages'.

> > (2) "Construction" as applied to natural language is purely a metaphorical
> > manner of speaking.  The notion of "construction" implies conscious
> > effort by people.
>
> You are redefining "construction."
How?  In all common uses of the word with which I am familiar, 'construction'
implies an active agent of action, not a passive agent.  Construction does not
simply mean 'development' or a chance occurrance of properties in entity X.
That would leave most common uses of the word and its derivatives devoid
of  meaning  --   certainly, you wouldn't say that a landslide was 'constructed'
at the bottom of the hill after it fell -- unless it were pushed for that purpose.
Even related terms like 'a [mental] construct' presume that the entity with the
construct is using and manipulating the idea as an abstraction for some purpose --
consciously.

(for my definition of "construction", see below)

> > The problem is that most of language is entirely
> > unconscious.
>
> Debatable.  Also, I fear, reasoning along these lines
> tend toward treating language as something mystic.
Have you actually asked people about their use of language?  Most people
that I've met are completely oblivious to the fact that someone speaks with
a slightly unusual accent*, or their syntax is somewhat different fromt theirs
*on a conscious level*.   If you point these things out to most people, only
then will it register:  "Ah, yes, *now* I know what you're talking about".  This has
happened to me time and time again.   It's not that they're not intelligent or ignorant
or anything of the sort;  it's just that it never strikes them as important, because
they take it so wholly for granted.    Their level of consciousness also, in my
experience, increases in inverse relation to the abstraction of the linguistic
aspect in question:  ask people about phonology or syntax (not in those words,
but as in "Does his <cough> sound more like /kAf/ or /kOf/"), and they usually
can't tell you.  Ask them, however, about the kinds of vocabulary they use,
and they'll be much more readily be able to do so.

(* I'm not speaking of nonnative speakers here.)

> > No one can honestly claim that phonological sound
> > changes are planned or premeditated, as if by government diktat,
> > or that the complicated processes associated with, say,
> grammaticalization,
> > come about because people want them to.
>
> Some English speakers use the [x] for "loch." Many do
> not.
And this was planned... how?

> Some have no [Z], yet grammarians and schools
> sometimes do insert sounds into systems.
Hardly.   [Z] has been part of English phonetics since Chaucer's
time, as an allophone of /S/ until borrowings from French introduced
/Z/ by having words that contrast.  For your statement to work, that
would have had to occur by means of writing and education by an
elite.   This simply did not exist at that time.  As throughout most of
human history, there was mass illiteracy, and yet, sound changes
still occurred, even in the absent of an intellectual elite.  Moreover,
the societies we are talking about did not even have the resources to
support such an elite were they to exist.  The grammarians of the early
18th century who finally set down most of the rules of standard English
simply did not have the ability to impose their views of what language
should be without the vast educational bureacracy as was later instituted.
Even today, there is little sign that people are conforming to the speech of
the educated elites they see dominating the radio and TV, as William
Labov showed a few years ago:

<http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html>

Here's a further question:  if people plan the changes that go on in languages,
what could possibly be the motivation for the kinds of changes we see?
What could possibly motivate some bureaucrat sitting in Washington or
London to say "Gee, I want everyone to have vowel chain shifts today!"
This is a great question, because that is exactly what we are seeing today --
all across the Northern urban US there is a chain shift in English vowels
changing virtually all vowels.  In the Southern rural US, there is a shift
going in precisely the **opposite** direction, as you can see on that page.
All this *despite* the influence of television and radio.  What a sadistic
bureaucrat that would be to plan that!

> > The people experiencing them
> > are not even aware that a change is taking place, much less are able to
> > explain why they are happening.  The fact is, extremely complicated
> > systems like language can arise out of elements which in and of themselves
> > or taking all separately do not have its properties.
>
> But if human consciousness is natural, why can't it be
> one of the "elements" involved.
I don't follow you here.

> > This is known as "emergent
> > properties", and is one of the central tenets of modern biology.  The
> result of
> > this is to say there is no inherent need to call "creation" what is in
> fact merely
> > spontaneous organization.
>
> Language is NOT 100% spontaneous though.
I didn't say it was. I said that it *can* spontaneously organize, just like
many things in nature.

> > This is not, as you claimed some think, because
> > languages "just grow", nor is there any qualified linguist I know of who
> would
> > say that. There are principles that underly that growth, based on the
> > way in which humans communicate on the microlinguistic level, but, and
> > this is the critical point, the patterns that the growth takes on at the
> macro-
> > linguistic level is entirely beyond the power of individuals to shape in
> and of
> > themselves.
>
> Did Shakespere have no effect on spoken English?
> Pushkin none on Russian? Dante none on Italian.
> Were not there individuals involved in the shaping
> of "baihua" into Standard Chinese?
There's no doubt about it.  But you didn't say 'standard languages' in your
original post, but 'natural languages'.

> > >An Emperor of Korea invented Hangul;
> >
> > You are speaking of writing systems, not abstract language systems.
> Writing
> > systems are, at best, metalinguistic phenomena, not linguistic ones.
>
> I spoke of both spoken and written forms.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Hangul
was a writing system, and when I just checked at Britannica.com,

<http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,39956+1+39148,00.html>

it made no mention of a spoken form of Korean called 'Hangul'.

> > >Hebrew came back from the dead -- reorganized by
> > >planners.
> > [...]
> > > Kemel Ataturk
> > >reorganized Turkish, replacing much grammar and
> > >vocabulary and putting it all into a new alphabet.
>
> > Again, there is this confusion about the meaning of "construction".
> Nobody
> > planned modern Hebrew, in the sense that what you hear today in the
> streets
> > of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv was consciously set down in law for all.   Israel
> may
> > have an official academy, but that does not mean everyone or anyone
> actually
> > speaks "Hebrew", for the reason stated above: that it does not exist.
>
> This I don't follow.
What don't you follow?

> > The rules
> > that official academies and longstanding cultural traditions standardized
> as the
> > "languages" we are taught in school are not used by anyone, even their
> creators,
> > since there are so many more things about speaking a human "language" than
> > could ever be written down.
>
> I agree in general. Not ALL the "rules" are ALWAYS used, but
> this does not mean that there may well be an effect.
I haven't denied that they have no effect. What I was taking issue with
was your seeming insistence that most of the changes that occur in
languages are due to some institution telling people how to speak;
precisely the opposite is the case.  That is, almost all the changes that
occur to the speech patterns that occur in a community are the result
of unconscious changes in their speech habits.

> > As for Kemal Atatürk, what he did could not be termed "constructed"
> >either, despite the fact that some of his plans did actually come into use.  This
> >is because he influenced their conscious use of speech, but he did not have control
> >over any part of the language which is used unconsciously, which is most of it.
>
> He led the government that ran the schools, etc. This is not
> to say his ideas were all accepted, but those he favored were
> pushed -- and had effect. On the spoken language.
How?  The question at hand, if I have been reading you right, is that
you thought most of the changes that occur in language are the result
of elites, like those who created standardized languages like Classical Latin
and English.   Is that the case?

>  > (The change of the writing system, as I've noted, was not a linguistic
> change.)
>
> I'm speaking of vocabulary and usage in general, spoken being
> primary.
Right.  But most of Atatürk's linguistic reforms were
aimed at the implementation of the Roman alphabet, instead
of the traditional Arabic alphabet.

> > >Natural languages and subsidiary language forms are,
> > >in fact, often the result of conscious efforts to fill a need.
> > >And fun can be a need as well.
> >
> > But, as I've tried to show, this is precisely what they are *not*.
>
> No "conscious effort to fill a need" in language?
> Can't buy that.
No! No! It's not that there is *no* conscious effort to fill a need
in language, but that it is so limited, both in type and extent, that
it has little influence on the kinds of linguistic theories that linguists
use to explain the phenomena in spoken speech forms.

> > "Construction"
> > implies conscious ability to shape the entire language in the way in which
> we
> > conlangers try to shape our languages.
>
> No, it does not (in my opinion). It is often directed at one
> very limited aspect. You are redefining "Construction" to
> make it so sweeping as to be impossible.
What is so sweeping about it?  Here's what my Reader's Digest
Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary says:

      "Construct. (1)  to form by assembling parts; to build; erect.
      (2) to create (an argument or sentence, for example) by
      systematically arranging ideas or expressions; devise with
      the mind.  (3) Mathematics.  To draw (a geometric figure)
      according to specific requirements, usually with instruments
      limited to a ruler and compass."

In none of that do I see any evidence of a notion of passive "construction"
whereby two things synthesize together to form a new object without forethought.
This would seem to refute your definition, if I understand what you're saying.  Using
the above definition, languages are thus not constructed.

> > But, obviously, we cannot shape the
> > entirety of the language,
>
> No, not per se. There I tend to agree.
But... if you accept this, you are contradicting yourself.   What are
you saying is being constructed?  In your first post, you said:

    "Classical Latin" "Classical Literary Chinese," Sanskrit,
     etc. were all norms set by "grammarians" -- not mere
     refections of what was being spontaniously spoken by
     some population. Further back, languages like Akkadian
     seem to have been "devised" from various souces by a
     series of planners.

Those are pretty absolute statements there.   You say here, as
least ostensibly, that those languages are norms *set* by grammarians.
You seem to be confusing here standardized languages like Latin
and Classical Chinese with languages like Akkadian, which as far
as I know, never became highly standardized.   It is for this reason
why I said "languages" don't exist, because as you were phrasing it,
you seemed to be saying that standardized languages and "natural
languages" (which is the only phrase you used in your post) are one
and the same.

> > and so to that extent, there is nothing "constructed"
> > about human languages.
>
> This does not follow, by my logic -- or IMO by the
> normal use of the word "Construction."
I'm sorry.  I'm clearly not understanding your argument
-- what definition *are* you using then?


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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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