Re: A question and introduction

H. S. Teoh sikyal:

> > I'm sort of the opposite opinion.  I have seen too many langs that depend
> > too heavily on some "concept," which is said to flow from the culture, and
> > which permeates the language in totally absurd ways. "This culture
> > worships cows, so they only use the letters c-o-w, and all words have
> > three syllables to match the number of letters in the word COW, and there
> > are 348 individual roots for different kinds of cows, plus a whole set of
> > cow-forming affixes, and poetry based on the noises that cows make, etc,
> > etc, ad nauseum." This "deep, internal consistency" quickly turns into
> > banality.
> [snip]
>
> On the contrary, I think that such banality only arises from an initially
> banal idea. I don't see what's wrong with having a common motif permeate
> every aspect of the language, except when the motif itself is banal to
> begin with.
To begin with, such things are unnatural. If you're making a conculture at
all, I assume you have some interest in naturalness, and natlangs do *not*
generally have motifs like this. Secondly, the whole notion is suspect to
me--it implies a closer link between language and philosophy than I think
exists, like Sapir-Whorf in reverse (as I said in my earlier e-mail).
Finally, I am yet to see an actual example language with such a consistent
motif where the execution wasn't rediculously simple-minded, leading me to
think that the whole concept lends itself to bad results.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton