Re: CHAT: EU allumettes (was: Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy, Jackendoff and Matchboxes

Ray:
> On Sunday, May 2, 2004, at 02:22 PM, And Rosta wrote:
> [snip]
> > I was thinking rather that since this hypothetical EU language would
> > be for official & legalistic use, it might as well confer the
> > additional boon of being unambiguous, in which case some kind of
> > amalgam of several dozen European languages would be quite the
> > wrong way to go about it.
>
> But isn't this precisely what 18th century conlangers like Dalgarno &
> Wilkins thought & aimed for.
No AFAIK. I may be wrong, but I thought their main desire was for
a common scholarly language that, perhaps as a beneficial byproduct,
systematized enlightenment knowledge.

> Fortunately, neither of their conlangs, nor any other similar 'logical,
> philosophic' conlangs of the time caught on. Now 3 centuries later, we
> see that their philosophy & logic was a wee bit mistaken.
To me they're no better or worse than your average IAL (all of which
are worse than your average natlang). If, though, you are right that
they aimed for unambiguity, then I'd count that as a big plus in
their favour.

> But if unambiguity is the aim, there's always Classical Yiklamu   ;)
>
> [snip]
> > to an equal degree. The one wholly official language would merit
> > its status by virtue of its superior qualities of unambiguity
> > (superior for its legalistic purposes),
>
> I fear this is like looking for a chimaera.
Politically, of course. But not linguistically. I think it is
instructive to realize that a language that has the expressive
capabilities of a natlang but that is unambiguous is
linguistically achievable.

--And.

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