Re: OT: Interesting article

Quoting Harald Stoiber <stoiberh@...>:

> On Thu, 31 Jul 2003 16:52:17 -0500, James Worlton <jworlton@...>
> wrote:
>
> >I thought at least some of you might find this interesting. It would be
> >interesting to study other languages in addition to English as well.
>
> Yes, especially conlangs. ;-))
>
> >http://channels.netscape.com/ns/atplay/package.jsp?
name=fte/writereveals/writereveals
>
> Questions arise:
> 1) Would women therefore also create neccessarily different conlangs?
I'd doubt it. There might tendencies in conlang design choices that reflect
these differences in style (men might be more likely to endow their conlangs
with complex determiner systems, say), but given the frequency of freaklangs,
how people speak in their everyday life don't seem to have much necessary
influence on their conlangs' structure.

> 2) How do men and women write in a conlang? Is there a difference, too?
One'd expect so. Changing medium (language) isn't likely to much influence
content.

> 3) Perhaps the study only reflects how people are socialized - or even just
> how they think they are socialized?
If there's systematic psychological differences between men and women, one'd
expect there to be differences in how they handle language, including written
language. But it doesn't necessarily mean anything much. You can with above
random accuracy guess people's sex from their occupation, too. Heck, you can
guess it from their _age_ with above random accuracy.

                                                Andreas

> For myself, I only semi-trust that study... but who knows. ;-)
>
> Cheers,
> Harald :-))
>