Sociological Linguistics

[petegray]

JoatSimeon said:
> all extant and historically
> recorded languages, as well as those which can be reconstructed with any
> degree of confidence (like PIE) are equally "expressive", ie., basically
> equally efficient as means of communication.

At the danger of being politically incorrect, I find different languages
differently "expressive".   Of course they can all express anything, but
some, through deliberate choice or through historical accident, express
certain factors, while others leave some factors vague and ambiguous.
Speakers of Attic Greek were self-consciously proud of the emotional
expressiveness of the particles, which they claimed non-Athenians could
never get right.   Speakers of Latin (or rather, writers) self-consciously
aimed at an architectural style with clear structure, which expresses
relationships of time, cause, etc with great precision, sometimes excessive
precision.   Writers of Classical Chinese deliberately used the inherent
ambiguites of their language to aim at a shimmering style in which it is
sometimes even unclear which is verb and which is noun, so expressing
something impossible in Latin or Greek.

So I stand against pat phrases like "all equal".   Languages, like people,
are differently equal.

Peter