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Linguists and esperanto

od Altebrilas, 24. maj 2011

Sporočila: 216

Jezik: English

sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 19:32:28

Todd, I am not interested in refuting his position, but I firmly rebut it, if you will allow the distinction.

If linguists had produced results of any consequence, being more than just descriptions, and having some benefits in practical fields like the learning of languages or machine translations, I would be more inclined to take them seriously.

[Razlem, I concede that some phonetic analysis may be of practical value, eg for machine production or recognition of speech.]

I am not aware that generative grammar has any physical reality - relates to how the brain works.

I seems no more than an alternative way of describing language rules - and not of much practical utility.

Anyway, what if you could produce a generative grammar of Esperanto, what difference would that make?

Isn't there a contradiction in saying that GG is not about usage, but at the same time requiring an established usage to test the validity of a GG.

Todd, as regards 'The horse walked past the barn fell', could you give a sentence of the structure Noun verb in the past preposition noun verb in past (no commas) which most native speakers of English would think well-formed.

Of course if this sentence is supposed to mean 'La ĉevalo promenigita preter la garbejon falis' then the sentence is well formed.

henma (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 19:53:52

sudanglo:Todd, as regards 'The horse walked past the barn fell', could you give a sentence of the structure Noun verb in the past preposition noun verb in past (no commas) which most native speakers of English would think well-formed.
By the way (and I know this is completely off-topic now, but mi estas tro scivola nun) can anybody explain how "fish fish fish fish fish fish fish" is a grammatically correct sentence?

I understand that "fish fish fish" is a valid sentence (fiŝoj fiŝas fiŝojn) but I am not able to understand how interpret it after adding 4 more fish to that sentence (even if the meaning is a complete nonsense).

Regards,

Daniel.

tommjames (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 20:12:18

henma:By the way (and I know this is completely off-topic now, but mi estas tro scivola nun) can anybody explain how "fish fish fish fish fish fish fish" is a grammatically correct sentence?
It probably means something similar to this.

sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 20:48:20

You make the point admirably Daniel that for a sentence to be 'well-formed' it is not enough for it to be theoretically interpretable by assigning some grammatical classes to the words.

I am in the dark as much as you, as to what classes of words the various fishes should be assigned to in order to make sense of the sentence.

My poor old brain can't see how fish fish fish can be interpreted as fish that other fish fish - pace Super-Griek.

Tom thanks for the link for the Buffalo sentence but the use of buffalo to mean 'bully' is unknown to me.

Anyway back on topic, my beef about linguists is the specious argument that linguists know about languages, Esperanto claims to be a language, therefore linguists have worthwhile opinions about Esperanto.

It seems a patently false line of reasoning to me.

The hidden assumption is that there are general truths about languages which all linguists are party to. Well, that can be debated!

henma (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 20:54:11

super-griek:Does it help if I tell that "fish fish fish" can mean "fish that other fish fish"?

If you understand the first and the last three fish-es in that way and take the middle fish to be the main verb, you get a sentence that makes sence - kind of.
Ok... thanks, now I understand (fiŝoj fiŝataj de fiŝoj fiŝas fiŝojn fiŝatajn de fiŝoj).

I liked this more than the buffalo version (only because that one uses a city name), (fish)x7 uses only normal nouns and verbs (but the buffalo version could be done without the city, maybe).

Interesting examples, by the way... What would Mr. Chomsky think about this? Maybe English is not a language either (ho ve! I only speak non-languages and parasitic ones...)

Amike,

Daniel.

sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 20:58:55

By the way, this discussion brings out very clearly how sensible it is of Esperanto to have explicit grammatical class markers, and how sensible it was for Zamenhof not to have modelled Esperanto on English.

I imagine that you simply could not produce 'puzzle' sentences in Esperanto like the examples discussed.

Or would someone like to have a try at that?

sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 21:06:10

No Daniel. Fish fish fish can't mean fiŝoj fiŝataj de fiŝoj. Fiŝataj is in English 'fished' and de fiŝoj would be 'by fish'.

henma (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 21:24:29

sudanglo:No Daniel. Fish fish fish can't mean fiŝoj fiŝataj de fiŝoj. Fiŝataj is in English 'fished' and de fiŝoj would be 'by fish'.
That's true... it should really be "fiŝoj kiujn fiŝoj fiŝas", but it the whole sentence gets too complex in Esperanto too.

To understand fish fish fish, it's easier to think in other phrase with the same structure... like, "food children like". So "fish (that) fish fish", in Esperanto: "fiŝoj kiujn fiŝoj fiŝas".

But the whole sentence would be

Fiŝoj kiujn fiŝoj fiŝas fiŝas fiŝojn kiujn fiŝoj fiŝas.

I thought that is was easier to understand if I changed "fish fish fish" to "fish fished by fish"

Amike,

Daniel.

robbkvasnak (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 22:52:25

If adults reject "planned languages" why did Martin Luther's peers accept his new version of German, Hochdeutsch? Or why did the Indonesians and the Israelites accept their new languages? Furthermore, there are a few L1 speakers of Esperanto - even in the third generation. Some of them are active in Esperanto life, even in la movado. The founder of Esperanto.org is an example.
The fact that one can acquire Esperanto and express all daily events and everyday thoughts in it without having studied a book, i.e. as L1, shows that Esperanto is a language (unlike Klingon, at least up to now).

Altebrilas (Prikaži profil) 26. maj 2011 23:16:11

T0dd:
It takes more than petulance to refute an assertion. If it's important to you to show that Chomsky is wrong, then you'll need to demonstrate that you understand Chomsky's position well enough to advance counterarguments. Anything less than that only makes you look foolish. If you don't want to make the effort to understand his position, then you shouldn't expect to be taken seriously when you assert that it's wrong.
I totally agree with Todd, but what is important to me is not to show that Chomsky is wrong, but that esperanto fulfills it purpose, i.e. to be a better tool than foreign languages for international communication.

Chomsky as the right to say that esperanto is not a language, if he gives a definition of a language and shows that esperanto falls out of the scope of it. It is not necessary to be a language to facilitate international communication: music or pictograms play also that role.

It seems that for Chomsky, the criterion for being a language is to have a set of L1 speakers able to tell if a sentence seems acceptable or not to them. Although such a community exists, it would not come to the idea of esperantists to ask them about grammar.

But the word "language" can be understood in ordinary meaning, and it is why "not being a language" seems infamous, because it implies that a fortiori esperanto cannot fulfill its purpose.

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