Re: Defining "Language"

> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
> On 7/19/07, And Rosta <and.rosta@...> wrote:
> > li_sasxsek@NUTTER.NET, On 18/07/2007 20:35:
>
> > > This may not be a popular thing to say here, but I don't
> consider most
> > > conlangs to be "languages".  I consider them to be plans
> or blueprints
> > > for languages, and then become languages when they come to life
> > > through usage.  Until then, they are just concepts.  The
> "community"
> > > may only be two people, but there does need to at least
> be a speaker
> > > and a listener.
>
> > Terminologically, I prefer for "language" to denote the
> blueprints not the actual human behaviour (or brain states)
> that realizes the blueprints. But the key thing is the
> grammar--usage distinction, and it doesn't really matter
> whether we prefer "language" to mean "grammar" or "usage".
> ('Grammar' = the language code, the system of form--meaning
> correspondences, Saussurean langue.) What's clear is that
> conlangers invent grammars.
>
> In a September 2005 thread on the AUXLANG list, I said
> (thinking of the
> langue/parole distinction but not using those terms):
>
> > From a linguistic perspective, there seem to be two
> > ways of defining a language:
> >
> > 1. the set of all utterances in the language, written and
> > spoken;
> >
> > 2. the language-specific structures in the brains of
> > all the fluent speakers of the language.
>
> (Note the context of our discussion was defining specific
> languages, not language in general -- "What is Esperanto?"
> --> the total Esperanto corpus or the language-structures in
> the brains
> of Esperanto speakers, not the original prescriptive blueprint for
the
> language, or the general idea of an auxlang with such and such
> characteristics.)
>
> It is in sense #1 that dead languages are still languages
> even if they have no fluent speakers, and (perhaps) conlangs
> with a corpus, even a small one, might be considered languages
> even though they have never had even one fluent speaker.
> In sense #2, however, a conlang might could be considered a "real"
> language even if it has only one fluent speaker (typically the
> language's creator).
>
> I think something is missing here, though, because Dana's definition
> requiring at least two fluent speakers to form a community makes
> intuitive sense to me.
I should have qualified that better, because a dead language is still
a language.  There may no longer be any speakers, but the language was
once alive/active.


> And And's use of the term to refer to "denote the blueprints not the
> actual human behaviour (or brain states) that realizes the
blueprints"
> has problems even when applied to conlangs.  I think Kalusa,
> for instance,
> was more of a "real language" (whether in terms of langue or parole
> or speaker community) than most conlangs, even though it never
> had any blueprints -- only a corpus, and (by the end of the project)
> several more or less fluent "speakers".  (Even if two of the
> most fluent
> "speakers" had different pronunciations in mind for the name of the
> language, as we found out at LCC2 (David Peterson after my talk:
> I was surprised to hear you pronounce /ka.'lu.sa/ as /'ka.lu.sa/.))
My main point was that anyone could "design" (=create a blueprint for)
a language, but usage shows it to truly be a language.  The design
could contain quirks or flaws that make it non-functional, but once
the it comes to life as a language, it may differ considerably from
the blueprint as users coin new words, or improvise workarounds for
the design flaws.