Re: Book: Lunatic Lovers of Language

At 8:07 pm -0700 19/4/00, Sally Caves wrote:
>wayne chevrier wrote:
[....]
>
>> Her problem seems to be a confusion between glossalalia, language
>> construction, and linguistic crankery (i.e. Marr).
>
>Indeed.
>Here's a sample statement; all conlangs fall into either one of
>two categories:  "On the one hand, an intellect, a rational,
>analytic, and logical understanding, a utopian-constructive
>one which aims to organise the world, and is masculine in
>essence.  On the other, a grasp that is intuitive, instinctive,
>spontaneous, globalising, sensual, primitive-infantile, fanciful,
>subject to hidden drives, in short hysterical, all of which are
>the defining characteristics of women, children, and lunatics."
>Page 24.
Good grief!

I have met women who are actually intellectual; I have female students who
are far more rational than many of their male contemporaries & who are well
able to analyze problems & clearly show logical understanding while their
male contemporaries are content with half-baked waffle.  I have met women
who are idealistic & utopian and are certainly good organizers.  They all
have struck me as feminine.  To denote these traits as 'masculine in
essence' is just myopic narrow-minded & ill-informed sexism IMHO.

I've come across too many males whose behavior is intuitive, instinctive,
spontaneous, sensuual, primitive-infantile (far too many of those),
fanciful and subject to hidden drives.  None of these creatures has ever
struck me as being remotely feminine.

>The one is represented by Nikolas Marr.  The other
>is represented by Helene Smith.
I see - what about all the other language modellers, language constructors
etc?  I guess they would sort of spoil her argument :)

>The whole book is full of these binary constructions and aporia.
Is it?  You mean perpetuating the old dualist nonsense: good, bright,
strong, living, positive, MALE; evil, dark, weak, dead, negative, FEMALE?
As we say in our neck of the world - Cobblers!!

Thanks, Sally, I think you've answered Barry's two questions below:

At 11:51 am +0200 20/4/00, BP Jonsson wrote:
>At 01:41 19.4.2000 -0700, Barry Garcia wrote:
>
>>CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>> >Before spending that kind of money, I would like to know what you people
>> >think about the book. What does it contain?
...[senseless] binary constructions and aporia.

>> >Is it worth the money?
I guess not.

[....]
>
>My super-compact review: a Francophone Esperantophobic lit.crit.
Oy, there's nothing wrong in being a francophone - some of my best friends
are  :)

'Esperantophobic' - having a morbid fear of Esperanto?  Eh? It's not my
favorite conlang, but what on earth is there to fear about it?  Any such
fear has just got to be morbid!

Sounds to me as tho the author has a severe attitude problem.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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