the arbitrariness of language structure

[Michael Burianyk]

On Fri, 4 Oct 1996, Zev bar-Lev wrote:

> ... the following 3 ways to say "Jacob's house"?
>
>      a) ha-bayit shel yaaqov   "the house of Jacob"
>      b) bet-o shel yaaqov      "house-his of Jacob"
>      c) bet yaaqov             "house Jacob" (with contracted form of "house")

I'm guessing this is Hebrew (or at least a semitic language)?

> Further confusion comes from the fact that some other languages may have
> more prestige than others in the eyes of speakers, bringing us back to the
> Russian and Ukrainian situation.  As an embattled minority language,
> Ukrainian is obviously fighting an up-hill battle, and is in some danger,
> while perhaps not of being swallowed whole by Russian, certainly of being
> nickel-and-dimed to death, with lexical and other encroachments.

The statement above, juxtaposed to a (supposed) statement in Hebrew,
brings up some questions about the state and future of the Ukrainian
language.

Didn't Hebrew also fight an up-hill battle for acceptance as an everyday
language? Didn't it win? If so, how did it? Can those of us with a more
'ecological' bias learn anything from the Israeli experience that can
help the situation for Ukrainian? Are there other examples of embattled
minority languages that have become viable?

I have my own ideas on how this should be done (basically, through the
forceful creation of high quality junk - popular literature, movies, tv,
etc - that the population cannot get in other languages as readily - note
that I am *not* in favor of linguistic censorship) but I would like to
hear from real experts on any case studies of 'ecological' successes.


--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca