LL-L "Language varieties" (was "Resources") 2002.04.21 (01) [E]

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From: Ole Stig Andersen <osa at olestig.dk>
Subject: LL-L "Resources" 2002.04.20 (01) [E]

> From: erek gass <egass at caribline.com>
>
> Use of the negative word, "notorious" (as would its positive
> counterpart, "famous") suggests a bias against the actual activity of
> the Wycliff Bible Instituters rather than just against their taxonomy of
> world linguistics.
>
> In biology, an analogy to languages can be found.  Although we are
> constantly losing species, more are also being identified (a whole new
> class of insects was just discovered recently).  Thus, "finding" new
> languages is not impossible.

Sure it is possible to find new languages, and even to "invent" them
(Nicaraguan Sign Language and Klingon comes to mind as recent examples).
But
it is also possible to "find" new languages as an artefact of your
method or
rather of the purpose of your taxonomy.

Ethnologue lists more than 6.800 languages. Another index of the worlds'
languages by Merritt Ruhlen lists 4.547 (if I've counted correctly).
That
is, Ethnologue lists 50% more languages than Ruhlen. Some difference,
isn't
it?

I don't think a taxonomy is (in)correct by virtue of its stance alone.
Taxonomic principles apply differently according to purpose. Ethnologue
will
not let any language languish without a Bible, so they strive to list as
many as possible. Ruhlen otoh is an extreme lumper. The ultimate goal of
his
taxonomy is to demonstrate a genetic relationship between ALL the
world's
languages, so he comes up with a drastically smaller number of
languages.
Even if you deduct the sign languages, which Ethnologue includes, but
Ruhlen
not, the difference is appalling.
>
>  I don't
> see any necessity in slighting their motivation, however.

But surely it must be relevant to point out how religious (and/or
politicial) intentions mold scientific results. The deep and sincere
convictions of the individual missionary-linguist notwithstanding, in
the
larger picture they are still part of the current all-out US-led war on
the
cultural diversity of the world. In the very same proces where they do a
commendable job of documenting the world's small languages before they
disappear, they contribute to drawing them into the current whirlpool of
cultural destruction.

In this case as in many others it seems that Good and Evil are two
perspectives on the same scene, rather than two separate entities
striving
for supremacy as the fundamentalists of all denominatios would have it.

Splitting languages or lumping them together is not just an innocent
academic exercise for the sake of Insight alone. It can also become a
social
reality as the massive Russian lingoucide in Soviet times demonstrates.
Tongues that the speakers themselves considered to be variants of the
same
language. i.e. dialects, were given (or rather had enforced upon them)
different orthographies. The purpose of this was to "divide and conquer"
the
colonized peoples, but the operation, that also involved frequent shifts
of
alphabet, had the full scientific cooperation of linguists who willingly
imployed their structuralist paradigm to create politically convenient
smaller languages. On the surface it seemed that a number of languages
moved
into literacy, but the actual (and intended) effect was to render these
languages quite useless in most of society's domains.

And if you would like to see, say, Berber, develop a modern and viable
orthography, you might prefer to do it on the basis of a high status
dialect, rather than create e separate orthography for each the 20 or so
Berber languages.

Language taxonomies share a number of challenges with language atlases:
They
are not well suited to describe phenomena like linguistic domains,
immigration and urbanization effects, bilingualism, diglossia and
written
language.

The distinction language/dialect is largely a poltical one, a question
of
what people think (or are made to think) about their language, and less
a
question of "pure" linguistic affiliation.

The situation of Scots, so often discussed on this list, is a clear
example.
Whether Scots is a language on its own or a part of English is not
judged by
linguistic criteria alone ("mutual intelligibility") but also by
political
intentions.

Another example is Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. Linguistically these
three
languages are one. But they employ two alphabets (religiously motivated
as
is so often the case) and they strive to make their languages as
different
as possible, especially in the lexicon.

Or Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, that are mutually intelligible and
therefore in a pure lingusistic sense one language, still the three
states
treat the languages as three, not one, as do the language communities.

But when Ethnologue splits up e.g. Arabic and Chinese into more than a
handful languages each, I think the shortcomings of their approach
become
obvious. The listed dialects of these languages may not be mutually
intelligible, thus linguistically separate languages, but the speakers
don't
think so. They consider them (more or less "fallen") versions of the
same
language, an allegiance thet is expressed in the cross-version use of
the
same script.

Like every other community we participate in (except for family,
friends,
work-mates and neighbours) language communities are Imagined
Communities.
Language allows us to metaphorically model or even invent things and
people
we have no personal experience with. Thus the composition of a language
community is not restricted or required to follow linguistic criteria.

Ole Stig Andersen
http://www.olestig.dk

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From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.04.19 (11) [E]

Ron and Sylvain,

... and of course English itself was threatened by
Norman-French and influenced by it to such an extent
that to its speakers of 1000 years ago it would be
entirely unrecognizable.

A big mixture indeed!

=====
------------------
Ian James Parsley
www.geocities.com/parsleyij
+44 (0)77 2095 1736
JOY - "Jesus, Others, You"

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From: Nicolas Need <need2000 at yahoo.fr>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2002.04.20 (04) [E]

Hi everybody !

I'm realy glad to read your very interesting texts
here. Otherwise, if you want informations about
romance languages (I'm a native speaker of Poitevin)
of celtics languages I think I can help you.

Yours faithfully, Nicolas.

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