Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> J Matthew Pearson wrote:
> >
> >Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> > > "Artificial" is a many-meaninged word. I usually use it in the sense
> > > "man-made", and under that definition not only conlangs, loglangs,
> > > programming languages etc, but also all natlangs are "artificial"!
> >
> >Well, yes and no.  Parts of natlangs are consciously invented when people
> >coin new words and expressions, but the system as a whole mostly just
> evolves
> >spontaneously.  Our capacity for Mental Grammar is certainly not
> >artificial, any more than our ability to coordinate our muscles in the act
> of walking
> >is artificial.
>
> We-ell, to me, "artificial" don't necessarily suggest that it is invented
> consciously, so I'd label all sound-to-meaning correspondences, actual
> grammatical rules etc as "artificial". On a more general level, pretty much
> anything we'd refer to as "culture", despite that much/most of it have
> evolved thru' countless more-or-less unconscious decisions by myriads of
> people during long periods of time, is "artificial" in this sense.
So for you, "artificial" means "pertaining to some aspect of human behaviour".
That seems to be pretty removed from the usual definition, which (for me) most
definitely implies conscious effort, the purposeful exercise of ingenuity.

Even if I were to accept your definition, using "artificial" (or "invented") to
refer to natural language presupposes that words and grammatical rules are
cultural constructs.  Now, I suppose I could accept that words (sound-meaning
correspondences) are cultural constructs in the broadest possible sense.  But
to claim that grammatical rules are cultural constructs is pretty
controversial.  There is substantial evidence that the acquisition of
language--the rules of mental grammar--is essentially a *developmental* process
(in the psychological sense) rather than an *intellectual* process.  In other
words, developing rules of grammar is a bit like learning to walk, or losing
your baby teeth, or going through puberty:  Nobody has to teach us the rules of
our grammar, we just 'pick them up' spontenously.  We have a genetic
predisposition to develop language, which 'grows' in our brains as a result of
exposure to external stimuli (i.e. listening to people talking), just as we
have a genetic predisposition to develop muscles, which grow spontaneously as a
result of taking in nourishment.

To most linguists, the 'organic' components of language are just as crucial as
the 'cultural' components, if not more so.  But if we take the developmental
nature of language seriously, as I do, then calling natural language
"artificial" (or "invented") seems at best misleading.

Matt.