Re: Constructive linguistics

From:    Sai Emrys <saizai@...>
> Thomas Wier:
> > Natural languages are *far* more complex and intricate than any
> > conlang has ever been.
>
> Yes, but so? Weather is far more complex and intricate than any system
> for modeling it, yet we still do so and still achieve useful results.
> Even if you assume (as I think you are) that a conlang is necessarily
> *trying* to be a indistinguishable replica (or rather, exemplar) of a
> natlang.
But that's not an appropriate analogy.  A good weather analogy would
be trying to seed the clouds to increase rainfall, or using windturbines
to increase airflow, and then making conclusions about how weather in
general works.  Your analog is equivalent to professional linguists
using theoretical models, algorithms, to predict grammatical and
ungrammatical strings.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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