Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

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.

>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.)

>It takes quite a leap of faith to claim
>that two things differing in every respect are somehow the same.
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...

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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