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<div dir="ltr"><div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 20 July 2008 - Volume 01<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">-------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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<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);">Sandy Fleming</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:sandy@scotstext.org">sandy@scotstext.org</a>></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" 2008.07.18 (03) [E]<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" id=":ci" class="ArwC7c ckChnd">
> From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>><br>
> Subject: Grammar<br>
><br>
> I personally find vagueness and even ambiguity very useful and<br>
> appropriate in literature, especially in poetry. This is particularly<br>
> useful in minimalist approaches, were you let the reader's or<br>
> listener's own experience and imagination take over. I have a far<br>
> easier time with this in English than in German, and Low Saxon is<br>
> somewhere between the two in this respect. Yet, in technical prose,<br>
> for instance, English is capable of great precision and at the same<br>
> time relative conciseness.<br>
<br>
I think it can be interesting how literary forms are influenced by<br>
language forms. Would rhyming poetry ever have caught on in Europe if it<br>
hadn't been for the Arabic language? How come modern Czech uses<br>
stress-driven prosody when older Czech poetry used syllable length? Did<br>
it catch it from languages where stress is more important, and how?<br>
Could anything even vaguely like haiku ever have come to be written in<br>
English without the influence of Asian languages?<br>
<br>
Is it actually easier to develop and use technical vocabularies in<br>
English than in some other languages, and if so, is this at least partly<br>
_because_ of the sparseness of grammatical inflection? In English<br>
wholesale borrowing (especially from Greek, in scientific fields) is<br>
normal, making it possible to build layers of technical vocabulary, but<br>
do foreign loans actually help technical precision because the<br>
scientific or taxonomic meaning isn't influenced by pre-existing<br>
semantics? And is this borrowing encouraged by the fact that inflections<br>
are so sparse and regular that you can borrow or make up any new word<br>
and not have to worry about whether it can be pluralised or take<br>
participial endings, because it can always be done quite easily and<br>
naturally?<br>
<br>
Those are just questions, not theories!<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></font></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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