Re: Formal vs. natural languages (was Re: Oligosynthetic languages in nature.)

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:18:29 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>
>>       Certainly there is no
>> doubt one can define an 'oligosynthetic' _formal_ language.
>
> Yes.  Formal languages have little to do with human languages,
> if anything at all.  For one point, the definition of a formal
> language does not say anything at all about *meanings*.
Yet, *meaning* is surely fundamental to what is usually understood to be
an 'oligosynthetic' language, isn't it?

I've always been a little puzzled why, in fact, the term
'oligosynthetic' is in fact used for these putative languages. Surely in
the strict meaning of its two compounds (i.e. oligo- + synthetic) it
ought to be (more or less) synonymous with 'isolating' or 'analytic'?
Wouldn't 'oligosemantic' or 'oligomorphemic' be more descriptive?

> Also,
> while formal language theory has found a useful application in
> programming languages, trying to treat human languages that way
> has turned out to be less than successful.
Agreed.

[snip]

>>       AFAIK oligosynthesis is not found in any natural
>> language in the linguistic sense.
>
> Right.  Human languages, in order to have full expressive power,
> need at least one *open* class of lexemes, i.e. one to which new
> lexemes can be added whenever needed.  And that is precisely
> what an oligosynthetic language is not: "oligosynthetic" means
> that the set of lexemes is *closed*, i.e. no new lexemes can
> be added to it.
It seems to me significant that neither Crystal nor Trask give
'oligosynthetic' as a lemma in their linguistics dictionaries.

> Reality (and a fortiori, the vast universe of
> things imaginable) is too complex to pigeonhole it into such a
> closed list of "semantic primes", and that is the precise reason
> why oligosynthetic languages are impractical and do not occur
> among human natural languages.
>
>> That does not, of course, mean that one cannot attempt an oligosynthetic
>> _conlang_ - but so far attempts to do this do not seem to have met with
>> success.
I see oligosynthesis working only with a community that is isolated from
the rest of humanity and retains a conservative world-view that
understands everything in terms of a closed set of semantic primes. That
is  possibility in an alternate history or a science fiction scenario.

But, as I have observed before, such a set of _semantic_ primes cannot
IMO possibly be culturally neutral. This has certainly *not* been the
case with any of the oligosynthetic languages invented in the past.

>> [snip]
>>
>>> Yes it is wonderful how cohesive we with you are. As the concept "As
>>> above, So below" of the gnostics, and "Macrocosm, Microcosm" of the
>>> Elizabetheans, the "As in area, So in point" of Geometry.
>> Maybe senility is now setting in, but I just do not understand what this
>> is about. Is it possible to rephrase this in a way that an old timer can
>> understand?
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> I think it is not senility's fault that you don't understand it.
> I am young enough to be your son, and I don't understand what
> Andrii said, either.
Maybe, in the words of Winnie-the-Pooh, we're both 'Bears of Very Little
Brain'     ;)

--
Ray
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"Ein Kopf, der auf seine eigene Kosten denkt,
wird immer Eingriffe in die Sprache thun."
[J.G. Hamann, 1760]
"A mind that thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language".

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