Re: Language comparison

Sorry - this was intended for the whole list!

On Friday, January 7, 2005, at 06:53 , Sai Emrys wrote:

> RB:
>
>> The only problem is that any simple or primitive hominid languages became
>> extinct many, many, many millennia ago, way before any method of
>> recording
>> them. Without time-travel we shall never know them.
>
> I meant "primitive" as in those used by modern-day African tribes,
In what way are they "primitive"? I have come across and to some extent
studied quite a few African languages. I have not discovered any that can
linguistically be called primitive. Can you please give an example or two
and explain why in your opinion they are primitive.

Why 'tribes'? We do not call the Welsh a tribe, not the Scots Gaels a
tribe. We do not refer to the Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs as Balkan
_tribes_? So why call peoples like Zulu, Xhosa, Kikuyu etc tribes?

Quite frankly, I am a little disturbed by your example - but I will assume
it was not meant as flame-bait.

> and
> as some people would treat e.g. "Black English Vernacular".
I am glad at least that you said "some people" - yep, the sort that regard
dialects like Cockney or Australian as showing lack of culture. A plague
on all such people! And, I guess, those that treat "Black English
Vernacular" this way add racism to their bigotted view.

[snip]

> I am *not* trying to say that any full language is *insufficient*.
>
> An analagous thing would be (I hope I linked to the paper that
> describes this point) that some computer-language features can be
> implemented merely by adding new "vocabulary" (library functions),
> whereas others (e.g. recursion, lexical scoping) would require the
> language *with* it to be emulated to get the same power.
>
> I am only talking about the latter.
I do not see any valid analogy here between computer languages, which are
the product of human attempts to communicate with digital machines and
have evolved over little more than half a century, and natural human
language which is the product of thousands upon thousands of years or so
of *human to human* communication.

The complicated periodic structure of Ciceronian Latin was not by some
mystic process embedded in Latin from the beginning. It was something
developed within Latin, under the influence of Greek, and developed for
specific purposes. I am not aware that any human language cannot similarly
develop itself if the occasion requires it.

>
>> Better at what? As Chris Bates so rightly observes: "Without criteria the
>> entire question means nothing whatsoever."
>
>> As for conlanging - there are several different types, with *quite
>> different* aims. To treat them all the same is very misleading.
>
> I did not intend to do so, only to say that some languages can better
> fulfill a given goal - even if both do take on that goal. If one does
> and the other doesn't, than it's an invalid comparison, of course. The
> choice of goals is, in all probability, arbitrary.
The main goal of human language is to allow us to communicate with our
fellow humans - the cynics would also point it that it allows us to
deceive our fellow humans. OK - but the deception would be impossible if
there was no communication.

But computer languages have been developed for very much more restricted
purposes. Conlangs are developed for all sorts of purposes. Whether the
choices made by designers of computer languages or conlangs are arbitrary
or not is debatable.

>> We on this list like to help one another with ideas, whatever the type of
>> conlang, and we respect our very different aims; we do not try to judge
>> which conlang (or natlang) is 'better' than another. (Because in practice
>> auxlangers do like to compare one language with another for superiority,
>> they have their own list)
>
> *see above* Not trying to compare *goals* as being better or worse -
> they're probably axiomatic - just implementations *towards* those
> goals.
Yes, but to evaluate the implementations one must know the goals -
otherwise the evaluation is fairly meaningless and is itself arbitrary.
What I was trying to say is simply that the goals of computer languages,
of conlangs, and of natural languages are simply not the same. To apply to
a natural language the type of evaluation one might give to a computer
language is IMHO inappropriate and misleading.

>> For what purpose? That is a serious question. Until you know what the
>> objectives of your conlang are, you will not know what features of
>> natlangs are relevant in any case.
>
> I can answer this one less theoretically. For me-personally, my goals
> could be summarized as maximum communication - compact, dense,
> multimodal,
Sounds like an 'engelang'. I suggest concentrating on engineering your
conlang. Not only does it keep things on topic, it avoids flames    :)

[snip]
> I should clarify (again) something that I think you mistook about what
> I was saying; I am not - necessarily - saying that there exist natural
> languages that are better than each other (though this is a
> possibility).
Yes - but in what wat "better"?

> I would be curious to see if there are, but my guess is
> that they are mostly equal. This doesn't mean that it must necessarily
> be so for any language, though.
Well, there are surprising oddities like Pirahà - but it does very much
stand out as an oddity and probably more research needs to be done.

[snip]
>> As it stands it most certainly is not---we don't have a definition of
> 'better' yet and the best we can do is badger you until you give us one
>
> I thought I had explained; I guess not. "Better", then, as I use it,
> implies that there is an implied standard - a goal or set of goals -
> and that it is possible to measure how well some particular
> implementation (or language) meets those goals.
Quite so! The goals of computer languages are, as far as I can see, not
the same as those of human languages. What are the goals of natural human
language and in what ways odo, apparently, some fail to meet these goals.

> Yes, some goals will be qualitative - e.g., aesthetics -
Eh? While I understand why 'aesthetically pleasing' may well be the goal
of some artlangs, I fail to see why this is a goal of natural languages.
In any case, what some find pleasing others don't. Some people, for
example, find Welsh beautiful, others find it ugly.

> and some will probably not be
> bounded measures - e.g., "power" in a sense somewhat (not 1-1)
> analogical to the CS one in the article I linked to.
I fully understand "power" in the context of computer languages - but what
does it mean in the context of human languages or, for that matter, of
conlangs? Is Quenya more or less powerful than Sindarin, or Klingon? Is
Volapük more powerful than Esperanto?

> Some will, however - e.g., writing systems that are legible from any
> angle or
> direction of reading.
But writing is secondary!!!  We can write a language in practically any
script we please. Yes, writing systems can certainly be evaluated & some
are better than others. But I thought we were talking about _language_.

>> I've yet to hear of a language that cannot adequately express the fact
> that yesterday, I ate a bucket of stew. IOW, no language lacks the
> features necessary to discuss events occurring in past time. Perhaps
> people don't 'compare features' because all languages are equivalent?
> Maybe this is why the consensus is that all languages are equal?
>
> I'd disagree. What you are implying is that the current feature set of
> most/all languages is the maximal one. To me, that seems like an
> arbitrary and somewhat cynical perspective, since it places you in a
> position of assuming that it is impossible to improve. Whether it is
> or not, you won't ever discover an improvement.
Ah, the perfect language! People have been "improving" the apparent
defects of human language and giving us their perfect languages ever the
since the 17th century. Strange to say, none of these perfect languages
have so far caught on and we poor humans muddle along with our inadequate
human languages.

===============================================
On Friday, January 7, 2005, at 03:08 , Sai Emrys wrote:

> CB:
>
>> Power is how much you're able to do
>> with something, not how easy it is.
>
> Power is how much you're able to do with something... practically
> speaking.
>
> If the ease of use limits the ability to do it, then it's not really
> that powerful. E.g., you could theoretically transmit an entire
> Shakespeare collection manually via Morse code, but that's
> impractical. It's good for other things, though - short messages
> through novel mediums.
This is merely how powerful some secondary representation of English is.
It says absolutely nothing about how powerful or not the English language
itself is.

I cannot help thinking you are using the word "language" in a rather
different sense than many of us here are accustomed to use it. There seems
to be some confusion between linguistics and semiotics.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]


Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]