Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

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
> I hope your are correct, otherwise I am a damned fool for trying to make
> NGL a better language than English. So far I have convinced myself, and
> probably no one else, that I have devised a more compact and accurate
> tense system than English. It's good to hear that at least one other
> person does believe there is a difference between languages in overall
> effectiveness. Not all swiss army knives are born equal.
But is a Swiss army knife more "effective overall" than a paintbrush? A
boat? A wristwatch?

I can't cross a lake with a wristwatch, but that doesn't mean a boat is
"better overall" than a wristwatch.

Your vector system may well be more compact and accurate than English
tenses, but aren't you already presupposing that obligatory tense
marking *an sich* is "better"? On what basis are we to accept that as a
given?  Why doesn't your system take on the challenge of being more
compact and accurate in charting the hierarchy of interpersonal
relationships than Japanese? Does the fact that it doesn't make it less
"effective" than Japanese? Does it hinder the "overall effectiveness" of
your system? Why? Why not?

And what is exactly meant by "overall effectiveness" or "effective
communication"?

This seems to me a bit like the quandry of cinema verite where the
attempt is to film life "in the raw". But how do you do that? By the
very act of picking up the camera and aiming it at something, you've
already blown the exercise because what you've framed is not "life in
the raw" but one view at the exclusion of another.

So, too, when you pick up a language and aim it at something. Once
you've defined what "effective communication" (or "ease" or
"efficiency") is, you have, in effect, framed the shot which will be no
more than one view at the exclusion of another.

Well some lint seems to have gathered in my navel while I was
contemplating it, so I'll leave off here...

Kou