Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

charles wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
>
> > Nik Taylor wrote:
> >
> > > Charles wrote:
> > The way I read it, the writer of the second line here was saying
> > rather that there is nothing silly about the issue, and that it is on
> > the contrary something that should be taken with some degree
> > of seriousness.  The point was NOT that races aren't equal,
> > they are;  the point was that it was not a silly thing to talk about
> > them being so, likewise with languages.
>
> Yes, it was an argument by analogy. I simply reject that analogy.
> A better one is "all cars are equally good".
The point was that we didn't understand you because youweren't making thi=
s clear.

> > Any attempt to use terms of value judgment areat base flawed, and are=
 outside the
> > scientific realm of doing things.
>
> You can't say that without self-contradiction, because it is
> a value judgement to do so: "Value judgements are bad!"
No, if you will note, I made use of terms like "flawed" which do notequat=
e to "bad"; it
just means that there is error in a certain system.
Thus I was not saying that value judgments were bad, but only that
they were not scientific. Science does not advance with opinions, but
with ideas backed up by facts.  It's an attempt to be objective, not
subjective.  There is nothing wrong with attributing value judgments
to things, nothing inherently at least.  It's just that doing so cannot
be backed up empirically, so one should not be lead into the delusion
that there is actually any substance to them.

> > I would even deny the ability to build -- there is *no* basis on
> > which one can make such a language any more than another
> > on the macrolinguistic scale.  It's critical to understand that
> > dichotomy (the one between microlinguistic and macrolinguistic
> > issues), because it's the difference between life and death
> > of his position.
>
> Any tool can be made better or worse.
> Aren't we all engineers here?
What I was denying was the ability to make a language -- to build
one -- that actually was based on objective criteria, more logical
than others.  This can't be so, as others here have pointed out,
because what you decide to put into your language is at base an opinion
-- "should I or should I not have cases?" Well, either way, you get the
same result.  *With* cases, you get a more complicated morphology.
*Without* cases you get a more complicated syntax.  Neither is in any
way objectively better or worse than the other -- they're just different.

So, I'm not disagreeing with you that any tool can be improved, but
what I am saying is just what constitutes an "improvement" is really
not an easy issue to settle.  As I just alluded to, many people find the
issue of cases irritating or difficult, because they are used to a langua=
ge
without them.  So, they say that cases are bad.  For the same reason,
many people like cases, because they *are* used to them, and so
advocate their use in a conlang.    There is no way to settle this issue,
really, because syntax and cases are equally good at conveying the
information, as that is, afterall, the ultimate point of language, to con=
vey
information and to communicate.


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

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