Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

From:Charles <catty@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 22, 1999, 2:26
Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> > ... and you can see how it starts to melt.
> Granted, but that's not what you said.
Well, I thought it was me. If someone else has been speaking my words, though ... I pity them!
> You made a general comment about Ancient Roman
They were great generals and are unlikely to take offense, being dead-like.
> and (supposed) modern Japanese spelling habits.
Since they are (presumed) alive, I will let them spell as they wish.
> Spelling and writing systems in > general are abitrary assignations of sound to a graphical > form.
Ahh ...
> the Chinese and Japanese -- cultures which > for most of history were not only more populous but also richer > and more literate than Europeans -- seemed to do well for millennia > without it, and only introduced it at a time when the rest of their > *spoken* languages (statistically the hardest part of a language to > impose changes on from the outside) were undergoing similar > Westernization (supposedly, the current Chinese use of plural > marking in pronouns is a direct result of their exposure to Western > languages in which the distinction is obligatory). In fact, the > Roman (and early Chinese, and Japanese, etc.) system of > doing things is in some ways more natural, since, like I said, > no -- one -- breaks -- their -- spoken -- sentences -- up -- > into -- discrete -- segments -- when -- they're -- talking.
Yes. Except, we do.
> > So, I'm talking about attachment ambiguities. > > Punctuation and intonation help a whole lot. > > But, if intonation is so important to remove ambiguity, > how do we manage to understand each other (for the most > part) just fine here in this forum?
Um, ... we don't, pardner.