Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

Joshua Shinavier wrote:

>The argument that "all languages are equal because there is no way of provi=
ng
>one superior to another" is a confused one; if there is no way of
>comparing the
>worth of languages, then their "equality" is a meaningless concept.
Agreed!

>There *are*, however, properties of languages which *can* be compared quite
>effectively, logic and complexity being two of the easiest to define a
>means of
>measurement for --
I'm not so sure about that.  The last time this issue was discussed on
Conlang, we tried to figure out some objective criteria for measuring
relative logic and complexity, without much success (or at least, *I* was
unconvinced).  The only real quantifiable feature that people could come
up with was relative number of morphologically irregular forms.  The idea,
I guess, is that morphologically irregular forms are harder to learn (both
by native speakers and by second language learners), making a language that
has more irregular forms more 'complex' and less 'logical' than a language
with less irregular forms.

However, morphological irregularity is such a marginal phenomenon in all
languages that I question whether it can be taken as a serious measure of
relative complexity or logic.  All languages are overwhelmingly
compositional, and I can't see that it makes much difference to GLOBAL
complexity whether a
language has, say, 12 irregular verbs or 42.

Another thing to keep in mind is that, even with objective criteria to
measure them, 'complexity' and 'logic' depend very much on your point of
view, and on how well you understand the phenomenon you're examining.
An interesting example that just recently came to my attention is the
distribution of the Accusative and Partitive cases in Finnish.  As many
of you probably know, direct objects in Finnish can appear in either the
Accusative or the Partitive case (or the Nominative case in imperatives
and certain non-finite constructions):

        H=E4n  luki      kirjat
        he   read-Pst  book-Acc.Pl
        "He read the books"
        "He read some books"

        H=E4n  luki      kirjoja
        he   read-Pst  book-Part.Pl
        "He read some of the books"
        "He was reading books"

Whether this is system is simple or complex depends on what your initial
assumptions are.  If you take the Accusative form to be the 'basic' one,
and the Partitive form to be the 'marked' one (as most teachers of Finnish
do), then the system turns out to be quite complex, insofar as you need to
learn large number of rules in order to know when to use one form and when
to use the other.  For example:

(1) The Partitive must be used in place of the Accusative in negative
clauses
(2) The Partitive must be used after prepositions
(3) The Partitive is required with the subjects of resultative clauses
(4) Use the Partitive instead of the Accusative with certain present
tenses
(5) Certain verbs select the Partitive in place of the Accusative in
all tenses

Et cetera et cetera.  HOWEVER, if you assume that the Partitive is the
'basic' direct object form and the Accusative is the 'marked' one, then
suddenly the system becomes extremely simple.  You can basically state
the distribution of the two cases with one rule:

(1) Use the Accusative in place of the Partitive when the verb denotes
a completed event in which the object is totally affected

The point I'm trying to make is that whether a particular linguistic
phenomenon seems random (and hence 'complex' and 'illogical') may depend
on your analysis.  One set of assumptions may lead you to conclude that
there's no pattern to the data, while another set of assumptions may reveal
that the data is actually highly structured and sensible - on its own terms.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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