Re: A Bit of a Flame

Hi!

Trent Pehrson <pehr099@...> writes:
> Be warned: this is a bit of a flame.
>...
Haha!  Thank you, I read your post with a lot of honest amusement (no
irony here, just in case the lack of irony cannot be transported by
a text file posting).

I'm not sure whether your posting is irony, though, or whether you
have not understood what people here on the list have understood: the
structures we use are mere models.  Grammars based an these models
usually fail to be perfect for the human language they describe.  For
all sentences reasoning about the correctness of sentences, there is
an implicit 'within the model (and its domains)'.  That's commonsense,
I think.  However, models are a very good means of describing the
general structure of a language and for trying to understand the
structure and predict actual acceptance of sentences.

That's it.  It's simply a bit brain-dead to define a language by
listing all sentences a speaker of that language would accept or
utter.  Models are simplification, a handy reduction to finiteness.
They don't claim to be a perfect description of a language.

Therefore, in case you are not being ironic, I don't understand your
point, because you simply seem to have understood the reason for
having models, but turn it to a reason why models are stupid in
linguistics. :-) Hmm.

Any science usually work in the same way; not only linguistics uses
models for trying to understand a phenomenon.

Your own creative conlang must be very interesting, please share your
thoughts!

**Henrik

PS:

Some of your vocative fail to address me, therefore, I'll start to
comment in detail here.  Sorry again if I missed the irony:

> You Chomsky-loving,
No.

> structure-worshiping linguists
No.  Structure-loving, yes, but not worshipping.

>are so brainwashed.
Maybe, how can I decide this?

> Language structure is as arbitrary and as variable as individual thought.
Correct.

> It is a totally malleable convention
No, it's handy.

> that never remains constant for more than a few years.
Probably.

> The only way you people can justify your rigid ideas
No rigid ideas.

> is by creating an extremely narrow definition of language
The definition should be as broad as possible and as narrow as
necessary to be useful for good predictions and a good description
while retaining the status of a simplifying mechanism.

>....
etc.

> Accept the truth.
Tell it me.

> Linguistic models are useful only within a declared domain of
> language exploration.
Correct.

> They are not universal and none of them are all
> inclusive
Correct.

> especially when you consider the possibility of non-
> human language in the universe and even in the animal kingdom of our
> own little planet.
Correct.

> Of course, you structure lovers
YES, YES!! :-)

> are freaking out right now
No. :-)  I agree.

> -- probably arguing that anything non-human *can't* be language.
No, now I disagree, I would not argue that way.

>...
Ok.  And so on...

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