Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject

Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> writes:
>
>>I think I've finally figured out why grammar is so
>>complex. It's because it's an artificial attempt to
>>discover "rules" in what is really a monsterous
>>collection of exceptions. There ARE no rules; only
>>exceptions! ...
>
>
> Well, I find that too strict, since children do try to find rules when
> learning a language.  There's a certain state of language aquisition
> when children over-generalise (e.g. make all verbs regular), so some
> grammar rules probably do exist in peoples' brains.
Yes - having had children of my own and now observing grandchildren,
there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that Henrik is absolutely
correct.
=======================================

Cian Ross wrote:
 > On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 11:35, Gary Shannon wrote:
 >
 >
 >>Counter argument: For emerging proto-humans in a
 >>rudamentary hunter-gatherer society there are a very
 >>limited number of things that need to be discussed,
 >>and the ways of putting those things together into a
 >>single utterance are mathematically very limited. "Me
 >>goat see", "Goat me see", "Me see goat", "Goat see
 >>me.", "See goat me.", "See me goat." Which, for
 >>reasons of survival, would have to be differentiated
 >>in meaning from "Tiger see me.", "See tiger me.", etc.
 >
 >
 > I'm not quite comfortable with at least one assumption you seem to be
 > making here.  Why would language even at a very early stage necessarily
 > be limited to matters of immediate physical survival?  Language doesn't
 > seem to be necessary for survival at all:

Quite so! Nor am I at all comfortable, to put it mildly, with the
apparent assumption that early hominids spoke in the comic book "me see
tiger" idiom. I have written about this before on this list, so will not
dwell on this further here. But I do find it somewhat annoying when
comic book stereotypes are peddled as 'linguistic fact'.
=================================================

And Rosta wrote:
 > Gary Shannon, On 27/12/2005 23:52:
[snip]
 >
 >> Therefore conlangs should not be "designed", they
 >> should be "used into existence." Their "grammar"
 >> should never be discussed, but only demonstrated with
 >> a catalog of exemplars (exceptions, all).

_should_? In any case, that would be a darned silly IMHO way to go about
producing a loglang or, indeed, any sort of engelang.

Conlangs are produced for a *variety of different* reasons - as this
list has made clear over many years. To suggest that there is one method
that 'should' be adopted in the construction of all conlangs seems to me
just nonsense.

If Gary wants to put his ideas to the test and produce a conlang in the
way he has described, and see how it works out, that's fine - I have no
quarrel with that. But please do not say that this is how conlangs in
general should be produced.

 >>Their
 >> phonology should never be analyzed, but only produced
 >> in real time, as needed, with assorted mouth noises.
 >> Their lexicon must never be planned, but only
 >> documented AFTER the fact. They should be taught by
 >> example only, not by enumeration of so-called "rules"
 >> which don't really exist anyway.
 >
 >
 > For me, the chief attraction of conlangs (-- & I favour
 > the engelangy sort) is precisely that they can be designed

AMEN!

PS - I also agree with Kit La Touche, and also suspect that Jefferson
Wilson may be right    :)

--
Ray
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