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Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

From:Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...>
Date:Tuesday, October 13, 1998, 20:15
At 10:35 am -0700 13/10/98, charles wrote:
>On Tue, 13 Oct 1998, Gerald Koenig wrote: > >> > >> >If small matters CAN lead to differences in language ease and >> >efficiency, it seems likely that we are being inaccurate to say >> >all languages are the same in their usability in effective communication >> > >> >Best regards, Leo Moser >> > >> I hope your are correct, otherwise I am a damned fool for trying to make >> NGL a better language than English.
And I sincerely hope (and believe) that he is wrong. A better language than English for what? By what criteria does one one judge one language better than another? .......
>> effectiveness. Not all swiss army knives are born equal.
Swiss knives are not born & IMHO are irrelevant to this argument.
>>But skepticism >> is easier to support than belief.
So I see.
> >I consider the "all languages are equally good" argument >very silly.
Yeah, about as silly as the "all races are equal" argument!!
>Unless someone defines criteria that are capable >of independent analysis, there is no scientific basis for >this belief.
There is. As Chris Palmer wrote: "It's more than just perceived/received wisdom. It's fact, and this has been shown in different ways by all contemporary branches of linguistics, from computational/Chomskyan, to cognitive, to functionalist." When, in my country, I find political opponents agreeing & only extremists on the left & right disagreeing, I take a good deal of notice of what the non-extremists are agreeing upon. When in the linguistic field I find both Chomskyans, functionalists, neo-structuralists &c. agreeing, I do take notice. I don't disregard their evidence and say it is neither independent nor scientific. By what criteria is _that_ judgment made?
>By every set of criteria, languages do differ >in utility, beauty, simplicity, etc.
Not the uitility, beauty, simplicity argument again! :=( What one person finds useful another will see as pointless. Beauty is _very_ personal. I found Quenya to be very beautiful; but another conlanger found it sounded like a ridiculous parody of his native language. And simplicity - a language is simple if it's similar in structure to your own & more difficult if it's not. Sorry - but with respect, these are _all_ subjective values & far removed from the purely linguistic arguments which do exist.
>One might as well claim >that all XXXs are equal, where XXX ranges over all the nouns >in any dictionary.
Utterly irrelevant.
>It takes quite a leap of faith to claim >that two things differing in every respect are somehow the same.
Well, I don't. I base my views on solid research & theory. Ray.