Sociological Linguistics

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Robert and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 1999 3:48 AM

> On Tue, 18 May 1999, Patrick C. Ryan wrote:

> <snip>
> >Everything in life of which we have knowledge shows a development
> >from the simple to the complex.

Robert writes:

> Yes, I've noticed how, for example, in the history of writing
> systems, the earliest writing systems were incredibly simple
> logographic systems consisting of only several hundred to several
> thousand signs and that reading and writing was so simple that it
> was a specialized occupation that required many years of study to
> master.

I. J. Gelb writes: "For the primitive Indo-Europeans, Semites, or
Amerindians the needs of writing were fulfilled in a *****simple*****
picture or series of pictures (emphasis added)." Gelb, under whom I studied,
spent a lifetime studying writing; and I do believe his characterization
carries more weight than your opinions on the subject. Children --- with no
training and only the availability of a crayon --- make the same kind of
pictures that were the basis of early writing; and it is naif in the extreme
to believe --- as you apparently do --- that logographs are somehow more
complex than an alphabet.

How many years of training is required to draw a stick-man, or a rayed sun,
or a hump for a mountain? Answer (for Robert's sake), '0'.

Robert continued:

> This simple system gave rise to a more complex system
> of syllabaries which needed a couple of hundred (or even less
> than a hundred) signs to express the same information.

Pat writes:

The earliest writing system we know that followed pure logographs is the
mixed writing system of Sumer. In Jaritz, there are 972 signs listed; most
of these signs have multiple values so are only a syllabary in the loosest
sense of the word. If you think that reading Sumerian cuneiform is simpler
than interpreting early logographs, you are simply displaying an incredible
lack of contact with or understanding of the subject under discussion.

Robert continued:

> Finally,
> this gave way to the most complex system of all, the alphabet, in
> which the tens of thousands of words in a language can be written
> with around 30 signs and is so complicated that it takes all the
> resources that the average 5-year-old can muster to learn it.

Pat comments:

Yes, actually alphabets are the most complex system of all --- how clever of
you to recognize it! It requires analyzing a morpheme, which has meaning,
into meaningless parts.

Pat wrote earlier:

> >My own studies and common sense decree that, at some point after
> >the onset of linguistic communication, languages were simpler
> >than they are now; and hence, less explicitly expressive.

Robert objected:

> It is rather the other way around.  What you mean to say is that
> your studies take this as an axiom and therefore fall apart if it
> is not true.

Pat rejoinds:

Untrue. When I began my studies, I had no idea that the data would force me
to reconstruct and attempt to identify monosyllabic morphemes in an early
language. But, as I have tried to point out for IE, this is the position
which the data recommend. A morpheme of the form -tV is unlikely to have had
the many meanings in IE that it does unless it began to be employed in a
much more general sense in a language earlier than IE.

Robert snipes:

> But since you cheerfully admit that no linguist
> accepts your studies, this is hardly proof of the truth of your
> axiom.

Pat objects:

Among the circa 7000 visits to my website, I have had many e-mails from
linguists who do find some merit or interest in my proposals. Whether any
given linguist did or did not accept the validity of my studies is not a
proof or disproof of my work.

Robert complained:

> And as far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims that there
> is no semantic difference between "cat" and "cats" is
> disqualified from talking about common sense.

Pat responds:

I have made clear that I prefer to restrict my usage of semantic to notional
differences and employ grammatical for the difference between "cat" and
"cats". If you do not care for this usage, you are, of course, free to not
emulate it.

But if you do not care to, tell me the word you would use to distinguish
between the semantic relationships of 'dog/cat' and 'cat/cats'.

Pat continued:

> >As just the simplest example, a language which is unable to
> >designate the plural form of a noun, is bound to introduce an
> >*ambiguity* into a statement that a language which can does not
> >exhibit.

Robert objected:

> But if, as you have claimed elsewhere, there is no semantic
> difference between the singular and plural forms of a given
> noun (cat/cats),

Pat interjects:

But I *do* claim there is a grammatical difference.

Robert continued his objection:

> then being able to mark the plural makes no
> difference in meaning and there can be no difference in the
> level of ambiguity.

Pat, incredulously:

This kind of freshman logic has no purpose but to ridicule. Robert, you know
quite well that I do believe that the addition of plural -s does make a
difference, and the the difference, which I term grammatical, decreases the
level of ambiguity in a statement.

Robert nailed his point(?):

> Either one of your statements or the other
> has to be wrong (since this is a logical "or," they can also
> both be wrong, but they can't both be correct).

Pat responds:

Nice to know you still have a command of teenage logic. How about an adult
argument --- this is an adult list.

Pat previously:

> >As another, certain languages have morphemes that have a much
> >greater range of semantic inclusion than other languages. This
> >also is a source of potential ambiguity that is not shared by
> >languages that have differentiated semantic ranges more finely.

Robert informed us:

> Spoken language expresses meaning through sound.  This means that
> an effective language has to be able to express the entire real
> and imagined world through sounds used conventionally to convey
> meaning.  How each individual language does this is of its own
> choosing and whether it uses analytic or synthetic means does not
> make it "simpler" or "more complex" than another language that
> uses a different method.

Pat interjects:
If we are going to keep coming back to "complex", perhaps you would care to
define it for us in terms of this discussion. I talked about ambiguity not
complexity.

Robert continued:

> If one language expresses relationships
> between verbs and nouns through nominal desinences and another
> expresses them through an extensive system of prepositons or
> postpositions, the one is not necessarily simpler or more complex
> than the other; they are simply two methods of achieving the
> same result.  Overall, every language has to be able to express
> the real and imagined world of its speech community.  Simplicity
> in one linguistic area will normally be compensated for by
> complexity in another.  If the language doesn't mark the
> difference between singular and plural in nouns overtly, there
> will be some other mechanism in the language to express the idea.

Pat asked:

What is the method of marking the plural in Chinese nominal forms -- what
other mechanism?

Robert continued:

> Finally, no natural language can entirely eliminate ambiguity
> through grammatical means no matter how many case endings or
> verbal inflections it develops.  The real and imagined world is
> simply too large for this to be true, and natural languages just
> do not work this way.  Context is the ultimate disambiguator of
> meaning.  We understand things by their context.  And I do not
> refer solely to the grammatical context of a word in a sentence,
> but also to the socio-cultural context in which an utterance is
> made.

Pat responded:

Red herring! I have no claimed that entirely eliminating ambiguity is
possible. I merely suggested that it is deisrable to keep it within moderate
limits.

Pat, previuously:

> >Please do not introduce "feel good" sociology into an ostensible
> >linguistic discussion.

Robert objected:

> And please do not introduce your own personal opinions and
> prejudices into the discussion under the guise of "common sense"
> (even though, according to Einstein, that is what common sense is).

Pat rejoinds:

And what would you have written if I had the ability to enforce your not
introducing your own personal opinions into the discussion. In a word, nada.
And, of course, I do agree. Common sense is a prejudice of a kind. Why not
substitute it for your prejudices?

Pat

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