Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

On Tue, 13 Oct 1998, Matt Pearson wrote:

> Charles wrote:
>
> >I consider the "all languages are equally good" argument
> >very silly. Unless someone defines criteria that are capable
> >of independent analysis, there is no scientific basis for
> >this belief.
>
> Nor, by the same token, is there any scientific basis for
> the belief that all languages are NOT equally "good" (whatever
> "good" means).  In fact, it's precisely when one starts to consider
> exactly what criteria should be taken as the basis for comparison
> that the whole "equal versus unequal" debate begins to seem pretty
> rediculous.  As I see it, debating whether language X is better
> or more logical or more complex than language Y makes about as
> much sense as debating whether language X is taller than language
> Y, or darker, or more bashful.
Since use of the word "good" means we are into value judgements,
it will be necessary to define some criteria; even so, many
people really dislike making value judgements at all.
But language as a tool is eminently judgement-worthy.

> >By every set of criteria, languages do differ
> >in utility, beauty, simplicity, etc.
>
> What criteria do you refer to?  What is utility?  What is beauty?
> What is simplicity?  (No offense, you understand.  I'm not trying
> to taunt you here with sarcastic rhetorical questions.  I just think
> you need to define your terms.)
No offense taken. Saying "lang X is simply better than lang Z"
is certainly an incomplete specification. "Lang X typically
requires 40% more syllables to say the same thing" is still
rather fuzzy, but one can work with that.

> In what sense are human languages "different in every respect"
> from each other?  Personally, the more I study different languages,
> the more similar to each other they seem.  One question that I
> ask myself constantly in my research is: "Why are languages not
> MORE different from each other than they appear to be?"  In other
> words, why do languages NOT seem to display the full range of
> logically possible structural variation?  It's an interesting
> question...
It's a matter of degree maybe, along several dimensions;
dimensions can be defined and degrees can be quantified.

One cannot logically maintain that "value judgements are bad" ...