Pronouns & sexualit

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Paul Kershaw <ptkershaw@...> wrote:
> I'm neither conservative nor Christian, and if I were to truly get into the
> intricacies of my opinion we may well inspire a "no crown no cross" addendum,
> but suffice to say I'm not particularly on board on either perspective but
> closer to thinking of it as an activity which people ought to have the right
> to do. :)
I tried to be clear about staying on the cognitive linguistics side of
NCNC. It's IMO an interesting topic in its own right, of which the
homosexuality debate is just one instance.

Though of course I have my own opinions (which are easily found), I've
phrased my remarks here neutrally on purpose. I do politics elsewhere.
;-)

To steer this more away from NCNC and towards on-topicness:

ObCL: Have any of you tried intentionally manipulating frame usage in
your conlangs?

E.g. I once wrote an essay (for Lakoff's class, who gave me an F
saying it was impossible :'( [serves me right for discussing
conlanging in a linguistics class?]) proposing a frame-foregrounded
writing system - where the frames themselves would be the "lexemes",
and the various permutations of them a sort of inflection. I still
think this could work, and it's part of my non-linear writing system
idea (which I swear I'll actually implement one of these days....)

Take a look at any popular social or political issues "debate" - it's
almost universally the case, like in this example, that the two sides
are using dramatically different framing for their language yet never
use the other side's framing when refuting them.

It would be interesting if there were a way to make it impossible to
have people of differing worldviews blithely talk past each other like
this, each thinking they were demolishing the other's position yet
never actually acknowledging or addressing their real, core
differences because they're so entrenched and assumed in natural
languages.

- Sai

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