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<div dir="ltr"><div style="text-align: center;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 17 July 2008 - Volume 03<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">-------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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========================================================================<br></div><br>From: <span class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(200, 137, 0);">jonny</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:jonny.meibohm@arcor.de">jonny.meibohm@arcor.de</a>></span></span><br>
Subject: <span class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.17 (02) [E]<br><br></span><div><span><font face="Courier New">Thanks,
Heather,</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">for your very
brilliant and illuminating excursion about grammar. Like Ron I specially
found your explanation about the Chinese concept very interesting. My oldest son
just spent some weeks with his girlfriend (she had made a practical work
placement in Shanghai, as an employee of Volkswagen) over there and told me some
interesting things about the 'ideas' behind Mandarin
language.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">But let
me have another look at sign language. You wrote:</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font color="#008080"> > This I think
is why sign language, little as I know of it, appears to be able to 'cut to the
chase' and express directly and often so succinctly </font></span></div>
<div><span><font color="#008080">> from the thought.
It </font></span></div>
<div><span><font color="#008080">> seems to be able to
create a whole concept in a single gesture or a series of gestures still
fewer than the words or phrases linguistic language </font></span></div>
<div><span><font color="#008080">> would need to
</font></span></div>
<div><span><font color="#008080">> express the same
idea.</font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Couldn't this,
among other reasons, also be a consequence of the fact that people
corresponding via SL, have much more eye contact to each other? And additional:
they implant much more gestics and mimics as an average speaker of 'normal'
language.</font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Isn't it a matter
of fact that it is easier to understand a 'lively'- not fast!-speaking person
facing you than one who, in extreme, is standing with his back side to you?
Since my youth I always have had a little defect to follow a
speaker on the background of a party where several people are talking
'higgledy-piggledy'. The same is valid for music- I'm mostly unable (very often
lucky me!) to understand texts, maybe German or English.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font color="#008080">> So what is there
essentially about the concept of trotz: in spite of / wegen : because
of that requires a genitive??</font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">An hazardous and
vague theory of mine: both, 'trotz' and 'weg[en]', also exist as a noun. So in
archaic time the genitive could have pointed out the relation between two
nouns...???</font></span></div>
<div> </div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New">Allerbest!</font></div>
<div align="left"> </div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Paul Finlow-Bates</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</a>></span><span class="lDACoc"></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.17 (06) [E]<br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Perhaps I should make it clear that I'm not advocating speaking or writing English like that!</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">My points were:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">1) You can understand quite mangled versions of your own language,
even when neither word order nor inflexions give direct clues to
subject or object; as Sandy rightly points out, that depends on
somebody having a good knowledge of the language.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">2) If both speakers are "manglers", using poorly understood mutual
second language as their only common one they will pretty rapidly build
their own rules and complexity, incrasing as more players come on board.</p>
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Paul Finlow-Bates</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" rel="nofollow" href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">>
</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: Grammar</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Sandy brought up the issue of precision versus vagueness in connection with grammar.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">My simplified, big picture is that languages with grammars that are by default vague have capabilities for more precision if needed, while languages that mandate a lot of grammatical detail, i.e. precision, rarely, if ever, allow you to be vague.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Sometimes it's convenient to be vague, not necessarily for lying or cover-up purposes as in Sandy's example. A lot of detail is oftentimes irrelevant and clutters the message. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I personally find vagueness and even ambiguity very useful and appropriate in literature, especially in poetry. This is particularly useful in minimalist approaches, were you let the reader's or listener's own experience and imagination take over. I have a far easier time with this in English than in German, and Low Saxon is somewhere between the two in this respect. Yet, in technical prose, for instance, English is capable of great precision and at the same time relative conciseness.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br>
</span></font>
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