Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Quote from: OakdaleFTL

For instance: I neglected to mention that I followed your link to Guy Deutscher's book's ad; and that -even if I disagreed with every "theoretical" point he makes (I've not read it, yet)- I'd recommend it to everyone, for its wit and charm and the wealth of "language experience" and, yes, oddities and freaks as well as commonplace and "regular" examples...interesting, all. He gives enough there to make one wish it were umpty-times as long; a mere 368 pages would only whet my appetite for more of the same.

Yes, I've taken a lot from The Unfolding of Language in this thread, including the thread title itself. Language is deeply fascinating, and closely related to who we are and what we think and how we share, but still most linguists manage to turn the field barren. You would have thought that people that devote their lives to the study of languages should have acquired the ability to write somewhere along the way.


Much of the book is fairly uncontroversial, he largely keeps away from the most heavily fought battles among linguists, though he builds up to some speculation on early language, but still well after it has become a language in most modern senses. There are many speculations on how language itself came to be.

Quote from: Investor

I believe that language must have been quite developed before leaving safe home, as exploration requires planning, courage and confidence, which needs to be convinsingly communicated and understood.

The idea that language came to be to serve practical problem solving and communication needs is not popular these days. For that purpose language seems vastly overengineered. Other species have similar needs and have gotten away with much simpler and much cheaper systems. On the other hand having language skills has improved our problem solving skills immensely.

Another theory is that language was sexually selected, that language is our peacock's tail. Geoffrey Miller is arguing this case. The earnest sweet-talker gets the child, and people get in power through language skills. It is a persuasive case, though I have a hard time believing that grammarians get laid more often than others.

Deutscher has written a defence of clichés, and I find it interesting that they need defending. If language were purely utilitarian, clichés would be considered a good, they express ideas more parsimoniously than novel expressions.

Quote from: fanfaron

Anyway, I'd say language is a feminine invention.

I guess you by that refer to the gossip theory, that language isn't just an entertainment device, but a tool to get power and influence over your fellow man and particularly your fellow woman. The ensuing mental arms race would caused a rapid growth in language skills. This is the more popular theory, or so I have been told.

Not just hubris, but also actual need of communication demands a certain minimal level of relevant distinctions. Language is for conveying a message after all.

Quote from: Leviticus 20.20

Wenn jemand bei seines Vaters Bruders Weibe schläft, ...
'If someone sleeps with his father's brother's wife,...'

That reminds me of another property of English, <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2449461">excessive use of apostrophes[/url]. Apostrophes, remember, is primarily used for contraction in English. The English cognate of Vaters (pronounced "fater" for those who don't know German) is father's and brother's is of Bruders. So where does this strange apostrophe in 's come from? It seems that a phenomenon called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_genitive">his genitive[/url] made grammarians think that -(e)s was a contraction.

That in turn caused the endless confusion of its and it's, since by the seeming genitive rule its should be it's, but it's not. By the gods of usability the apostrophe should be among the first against the wall when English 2.0 comes. Its a difference that doesnt make a difference. Unfortunately the gods dont seem to hear my vocative.

On the contrary it seeps into other language. The Norwegian father and brother is far and bror (an archaic form is fader and broder so again the difference isn't too large), and from that the genitive fars and brors is formed. Undue influence from English makes some write far's or bror's instead, or more commonly form it with names, Vinnie's kebab style. German has its case system mostly intact, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same phenomenon happens in German.

All languages seem to follow the path of the Perl language: <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris">laziness, impatience, and hubris[/url]. Laziness and impatience simplifies the language, and hubris, or ornamentation, makes it more complex.

Quote from: Jaybro

In The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker, following others, posits that knowledge grows at least in part along lines of latitude because similar latitudes support important technologies, the growth of agriculture and animal husbandry being two.

In the gossip category, I heard on the radio that he just got an honorary doctorate at the <a href="http://uit.no/castl/pinker/">University of Tromsø[/url].

Quote from: Shandra

Does only a small amount of Translators or Traders developed a little knowledge of the other language(s), and/or was there also some influence. And if, to what degree and in what context? As it seem there are just few or little adoptions from arabic languages to western europe ones, even if there must have been much interaction before and during the middle-ages.

Traders alone don't change language. You don't even need language to trade, trade gestures have been sufficient to show intent and handle haggling. Even today you when you get to places where you are unable to speak the language, you can be sure that this little detail won't prevent people from trying to make a sale. But trade gives incentive for other cultural contact. Spain and Spanish is heavily influenced by Arabic culture and language, and to some extent it goes further up Europe. A Buddha statuette was found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helgö">in Sweden[/url] from the 6th century, before Islam, and just a few days ago, while I was there, they found <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7330540.stm">yet another Arab hoard[/url].

Quote from: Jaybro

What seems clear about numeration is that it comes as needed. Where it isn't needed, as with the group mentioned by Oakdale, it doesn't come at all. My early understanding about the Aborigines of Australia is that they had no conception of linear time. Is that even imaginable in the development of Western thinking?

There's nothing hardwired about 'three.' Grammar may be wired, but words? Where some words seem to possess that quality, I think other explanations suffice.

No, there is nothing hardwired about the word three, but I wonder what it meant before it was reused to refer to the pure abstraction three. What was the original threesome? In English it would be tempting to think of tree, even more so in Norwegian where the "th" sound has been simplified into "t" so there is no difference between three and tree (the word for both is tre), but this is a false cognate. Colours by comparison are pretty simple, almost all words originally denoted something having that particular color. What had threeness, fourness, fiveity?

You don't need a word to have a concept, but you need a concept to have a word. <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2233459">My claim[/url] is that not only humans but many other animals have the concept of three, and these animals have no way of expressing it in words.

If all words have a concrete, physical, meaning that if you trace them far enough back, you can end up with a fairly minimal vocabulary. <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2472388">Guy Deutscher[/url] speculated that a language based on little more than pointing and a few fundamentals like the body would be sufficient.

Quote from: rjhowie

I found it amusing having been involved in the Educational field for years when an English teacher in Glasgow bemoaned to me once that no matter how much time he spent on the language as soon as the pupils were out at 3.30pm they just reverted back to their working class Glaswegian lingo.

I think this one post more than any condenses the future of English  (or any other language or dialect).

Languages change constantly, and it is primary the children who change it. The adults can add a nifty phrase here and there, or analyse the language to make up rules that governs it, but the dramatic or subtle language shifts that garners from one generation from the next are largely caused by the new custodians, children and young adults.

<a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2510212">I have appropriated the Perl virtues[/url], laziness, impatience, and hubris, as the drivers of natural languages as well. Laziness is a major cause of sound shifts, the new sounds are less energy consuming than the old ones, it is easier to say dis than this. Impatience efficiently shortens language, while hubris is the drive to do better, resulting in the construction of more elaborate linguistic structures. The impatience-hubris engine is powerful and social, you deemphasise what unimportant to you and the listener, and emphasise what is important. As the culture changes so does the language, as the language changes so does the culture.

The amount of creativity stirred into the language is staggering. We spend an immense effort in creating new words and phrases or reappropriating old ones, and we take joy  from that. Just look at any medium-length thread on D&D and you will find this in action. It is even more satisfying when others take up on our creations, but most are one-use, or short-use that fads away.

Seen from the language more important than the constant creations is how and from whom we monkey our words. We pattern all our speech on others. Early on that would be the parents and the background chatter, later our peers, especially those we would like to emulate, the teachers, the writers, the television, the future employers and authority figures, the Internet. We are capable not only of learning one or more languages, but keep track of the status of those speaking it and how they speak it.

The Glaswegian children can speak one variant at school and another one after school. They will even adjust to an individual speaker or group and what they want to achieve. Later on in life they will discard some part of their language as childish, other parts as low-status, and other parts as too difficult for their new peer groups. What parts they have discarded or discounted by the time they become parents themselves determine how the language evolves.

When school's over for good, will they speak Glaswegian or RP or a mix? Glaswegian like Singlish or Nigerian Pidgin have traditionally been low-status with "proper" English the high-status language. This quest for status has driven British English pronunciation to exaggerate high-status features, as you can see by comparing it with high-status English a couple centuries back. On the opposing side language is also part of identify. By speaking Glaswegian you announce to the world that you come from Glasgow or aspire to come from Glasgow. Then comes television as the great leveller. Glaswegian is one of the British dialects that do best, most British languages and dialects have died out or become greatly reduced, but it, like the other survivors, is becoming more standardised and less unique.

Too little basic human decency.

http://skepchick.org/2011/12/reddit-makes-me-hate-atheists/

While it probably doesn't apply to everything, I'd say you can generally do the opposite of Facebook without giving it much thought and you'd probably be doing the right thing.

The post sometimes appeared alone on the last page.

In MyOpera when we opened a new thread, that original post was visually distinctive, & easy to spot. It also set in motion what would be in context for posters to easily follow as a basis for discussion.

Also, regardless of how many pages the thread had traversed, each page started with the original thread opening/starting post....as a guiding light so to speak ...... a place to remind us of the thread's intended focus.

In my travels to many other forums, this feature always set the MyOpera Forums apart from the rest as a positive & motivating factor.

In Opera, I ended up losing my text input (if the page was too complex for Opera to save forms), because I had pressed Back without going anywhere near the Back button. Apart from gestures, which I was warned about, I had absolutely no idea how I did that to avoid doing it again. I later learned that one of the features was "rocker" sequences of input. I killed those but I still acidentally go back every now and then.