> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>> Den 31. mar. 2009 kl. 22.32 skreiv Mark J. Reed:
>>
>>> Why must there be a "point" to the variety of languages? Can't things
>>> just be, without all having to fit into some master plan? The variety
>>> is interesting of itself.
>>
>> Variety is charming. It makes linguists busy. Maybe that's enough of a
>> point
>> after all. But from a practical point of view it really would have been
>> much
>> better if we all used the same language - unless the different
>> manifestations of language do have the ability to enrich our communication
>> and understanding in practical ways.
>
> And I think it does. It's probably true that there's
> nothing you can express in one general-purpose
> language that you can't express in any other; but
> different languages seem to be optimized for
> talking about different things in different ways.
> What's easy to express in one language is harder
> to express in some others, etc. The strict
> Whorfian idea that some ideas can only be
> expressed in certain languages is almost certainly
> false; but variety is still useful if it only makes
> certain things easier to express in some languages
> than in others.
>
> (On the other hand, if certain ideas can only
> be expressed in a certain language by coining
> a lot of new vocabulary, then is the resulting
> expanded language still the same language?
> If not, then the old, smaller-vocabulary version
> of the language was in fact incapable of
> expressing those ideas. But I would generally
> incline to think that two versions of a language
> differing only in the amount of vocabulary are
> essentially the same language -- that it takes
> a deeper change in grammar or the fundamental
> semantics of basic vocabulary to form an
> essentially different language.)
>
> --
> Jim Henry
>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>