Meddelanden: 386
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ceigered (Visa profilen) 5 mars 2011 17:14:36
danielcg:It has yet to be discovered how it happens that esperantists so successfully and easily communicate with each other using something that is not a language.Malevolent doctrines of black magic, clearly!
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 5 mars 2011 18:51:01
But those who have adopted the view that there is something special about the human brain that has been produced by evolution to allow that species to use language (through their inbuilt language faculty) may well puzzle over the success of Esperanto and the lack of success of any of the 100's of other constructed languages.
Clearly, Ceiger in his multi-level classification of 'languages' has assumed that there is nothing to prevent any scheme for language becoming an actual language.
That is an unproven assumption about an empirical matter.
RiotNrrd (Visa profilen) 5 mars 2011 21:29:19
It makes sense that Esperanto would not be of interest to linguists, though. Esperanto is utterly straightforward and simple. What's to study, linguistically? While it's true that the language has evolved, it hasn't evolved much. With minor differences, it's still the language Zamenhof published. In a sense, Esperanto may be to linguists what arithmetic is to mathematicians - there's just not much more there to discover.
Esperanto should be more of interest to sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and psychologists. There's actually quite a bit of subject matter there for those types. But for linguists it might seem a pretty bare cupboard.
vejktoro (Visa profilen) 6 mars 2011 10:43:07
RiotNrrd:Perhaps Chomsky simply meant that Esperanto isn't a language that is of interest to linguists.You are correct!
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 6 mars 2011 11:04:52
If you accept that Esperanto is a language of homo sapiens, then any theory which claims to have discovered universal properties of human language must apply equally to Esperanto.
It strikes me that also of academic interest to a linguist would be the question of why Esperanto succeed in becoming a living language and all the other IL projects failed.
razlem (Visa profilen) 6 mars 2011 15:57:28
sudanglo:Well Riot, there is one area where Esperanto should be of extreme interest to linguists, and that is the testing of Universals in language.Pardon? I'm not sure what you mean here. Universals can't be 'tested' if they're universal.
T0dd (Visa profilen) 6 mars 2011 22:56:29
For something to be a language, why isn't it sufficient that it be actually learned and used as such by people? What is the basis for saying that a language has to have published dictionaries and translations, and so forth.
The developmental stages that ceigered set out are interesting, but it seems clear enough to me that the important step from project to language is taken when what we have isn't just a description or specification or chrestomathy, but an actual speech community. A speech community doesn't have to be large, but however small it is, it consists of people who are speaking the language, not just reading about it.
In the case of Ido, Interlingua, and Klingon, there can be no doubt at all. In the case of Quenya I'm only guessing, based on a small amount of info. The others have following of hundreds or thousands of speakers.
As for what should interest linguists about Esperanto...I guess linguists are the best judges. I'd think there's quite a bit to interest those who specialize in sociolinguistics. Maybe those who study syntax and morphology would find something too. I seem to recall a study, some years back, of patterns of errors with the -N ending. I don't remember the conclusions reached, however. It could be interesting to see how much people's Esperanto word order choices diverge from their typical native language patterns.
ceigered (Visa profilen) 6 mars 2011 23:51:07
T0dd: but an actual speech community. A speech community doesn't have to be large, but however small it is, it consists of people who are speaking the language, not just reading about it.Well not so much a speech community (although the root of the word language suggests that it should be spoken) - just "used" for communication, since there are purely written languages, and it's theoretical that some languages could even be farted out (I guess though that speak in this context means "to communicate as if it is a language"
)I guess this is where we draw the distinction with "theoretical languages" too - languages from fiction etc that *could* be used as real languages but aren't (although a rare thing these days since most fanboys tend to learn the language of their fictional fan-world if they can). But I should stop on that tangent since that's diverging into the realm of what's "real" and theoretical alternate universes etc which gets messy
razlem (Visa profilen) 7 mars 2011 00:02:30
T0dd:I think I've lost track of the disputed point here. Is it that Ido, Interlingua, Klingon, and Quenya are not languages?I originally said that Esperanto shouldn't be compared to natural languages in terms of ease and neutrality, but rather to languages that share the same relative function and origin. I cited other examples of constructed languages, and there was disagreement whether they were legitimate languages.
And now we're here
T0dd (Visa profilen) 7 mars 2011 00:23:11
Of course, anything can be compared with anything. Comparing Esperanto with other constructed languages, or projects for that matter, is interesting but...what's the point of doing so? Is there a point to be made?