Re: Introducing myself, and several questions

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:58:35 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:


> > The relationship between sound and meaning in languages is generally
> > arbitrary, with only few words approaching iconicity.  And aesthetics
> > is a very subjective issue.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
>
Exactly. I find spoken German more pleasant than spoken French. But I
prefer sung french over sung German. I also find Tagalog and other
Philippine languages beautiful, but I know people who find it not so
nice.

Your own esthetcics, Damian will be different from mine. You may think
you don't have any, but they're there. Try not to judge what your
esthetics should be based upon what others have done with their
languages.



> >
> > Few linguists would subscribe to that.  There seems not to be
> > any correlation between culture and phonology.
>
> Again, exactly.  It's like the amateur linguists who wanted to psychologize
> the Welsh for their initial mutations ("they're lazy") or better, for the
> particles that precede initial verbs and predicates.  "Nothing touches. They
> are secretive, careful, mystical."  Bosh!

It reminds me of those "Folk explanations" that say "such and such
ruler/king/chief had a lazy tongue, so everyone began to imitate him".
I've heard that one millions of times, especially in regard to the
development of /l/ in certain environments in Aklanon to /G/: Aklanon
/ak'lanon/ > akeanon /ak'Ganon/ (e is oddly enough used to represent
that consonant sound in Akeanon).


> >
> > Again, it's subjective.  Tolkien decided that the good guys in
> > his story would speak languages he'd consider beautiful, and the
> > bad guys languages he'd consider ugly.  The next author will have
> > different ideas about what is beautiful, and build his languages
> > accordingly.
>
I'd be very amused to see someone write fiction where the good guys
have a "rough, harsh" language, and the bad guys have a flowing,
pretty one. Anyone actually done that?

> Sounds, rather,  like that South American tribe whose name I can't remember;
> I have it on the tip of my tongue.  Their language was also almost devoid of
> abstractions, and they showed an inability to calculate, as well, i.e., to
> think in abstractions.  We even discussed it about a year ago.
The pirahã is who you're thinking of. I still can't wrap my head
around not having stories, or histories further back than one's grand
parents.

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