<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" id=":5d" class="ii gt"><div id=":61">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 22 April 2011 - Volume 04<br>
<a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
Posting: <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a><br>
Archive: <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html</span></a><br>
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)<br>
Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</span></a><br>
=====================================================</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From: <span><span style="color:#00681C">Hellinckx Luc</span></span><span> </span><span><<a href="mailto:luc.hellinckx@gmail.com" target="_blank">luc.hellinckx@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span>LL-L "Grammar"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">Beste Marcus,</p><div><br><div><div>You wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite">
I guess your observations are basically right, but I don't like how
you charge your report with personal judgement. "deformation",
"wrong", "myth" etc.<br>
<br>
There's nothing wrong with having an opinion about linguistic
features (my own dialect of Low Saxon does not know any polite forms
because people in the villages always use the personal "du" and
anybody foreign enough to be addressed politely would automatically
be addressed in German. Therefore I personally like languages with
no T-V distinction better, like English or the Scandinavian
languages which dropped the T-V distinction in the 60s/70s
[<a href="http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen" target="_blank"><http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen></a>]).<br>
<br>
But there's no point in calling linguistic features "deformations"
or classifications "wrong" or observations "myths". Dutch has
changed its pronoun system. You can personally consider it a
"deformation" but from a strictly linguistical point of view this
change is neutral and similar changes occured in many languages. A
normal linguistical process.</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm
not sure that any change in a language is "neutral" by definition. It
all depends on how these changes come about. We're dealing here with a
reform, imposed from above. A very small group of language architects
have once decided that reform was necessary...and so be it. No doubt
they had reasons (nation building, personal interest,
"Bildungsdrang"...), but that does not make their actions legitimate per
se. The whole South resisted for centuries and centuries, which proves
de facto that their plans were not good enough to seduce us ;=)</div><div><br></div><div>Any
change (not only linguistic) that does not originate from a a broad
movement within society is bound to fail I think. As an administrator
you can merely bank on such a revolution, but that's about it.</div><div><br></div><div>Language
design is another matter altogether than the building of a dam, a dike
or an Autobahn because it involves the (re)construction of something
very private. Bear in mind that an object that does not have a word in
your language does not even truly exist in your world. Words are active
carriers of our thoughts, so if a language surgeon is cutting and
transplanting words, mutilating homegrown grammars, installing
linguistic plugins, he is actually modifying our intimate thoughts. </div><div><br></div><div>Not too sure, I want that done to myself, without being asked.</div><div><br></div><div>Kind greetings...and...nog ne zalige Påse ;=)</div>
<div><br></div><font color="#888888"><div>Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium</div></font></div></div><p class="MsoNormal"><br>
<br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">=========================================================<br>
Send posting submissions to <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>.<br>
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.<br>
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to<br>
<a href="mailto:listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>
or <a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html" target="_blank">http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html</a>.<br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#%21/group.php?gid=118916521473498" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498</a><br>
===============================================================</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div></div>