11.386, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

Wed Feb 23 19:49:56 UTC 2000

LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-386. Wed Feb 23 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.386, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Martin Jacobsen <marty at linguistlist.org>
                    Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>
		    Scott Fults <scott at linguistlist.org>
		    Jody Huellmantel <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

Assistant Editors:  Lydia Grebenyova <lydia at linguistlist.org>
		    Naomi Ogasawara <naomi at linguistlist.org>
		    James Yuells <james at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Sudheendra Adiga <sudhi at linguistlist.org>
                      Qian Liao <qian at linguistlist.org>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:58:29 +0000
From:  larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Subject:  Re: 11.366, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

2)
Date:  Mon, 21 Feb 2000 11:19:41 GMT
From:  "A.F. GUPTA" <engafg at ARTS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject:  Re: 11.366, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 21 Feb 2000 08:58:29 +0000
From:  larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Subject:  Re: 11.366, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

>  In a message dated 2/16/00 7:07:07 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>  linguist at linguistlist.org writes:
>
>   Just to say that we need to remember that languages are constructs.
>   There are no languages.  Only people performing language and people
>   creating abstract notions of language.

Remarkable.  Of course it is true that individual languages are not, in general,
like cut and polished diamonds, with hard, glittering edges.  But it is going too
far to conclude that therefore individual languages do not exist at all.

Compare baseball.  Before the 1850s, there was no set of agreed rules for playing
baseball.  Instead, each town played the game with somewhat different rules from
every other town, and games between towns required a certain amount of negotiation
before they could be played.  Only in the 1850s did a widely agreed set of rules
emerge.

The view above would therefore have us believe that, before the 1850s, at least,
no such game as baseball existed, but only people performing baseball and people
creating abstract notions of baseball.  Is this plausible?

In fact, the National League and the American League play the game by slightly
different rules today.  Should we therefore conclude that Major League Baseball
does not exist, at least as a game?  Is the game no more than a fantasy born of
Commissioner Selig's fevered brow?  ;-)

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 21 Feb 2000 11:19:41 GMT
From:  "A.F. GUPTA" <engafg at ARTS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject:  Re: 11.366, Disc: Species Extinction vs Language Extinction

Nitti45 at aol.com (Richard S. Kaminski) wrote:

>     With regard to the issue of language extinction vs. species
>     extinction, I
> will say that there are reasons to "mourn" the loss of languages,
> some of them more valid than others.  As I see it, two of the more
> valid reasons are

>1) The loss of the culture, of which the extinct
> language had been a vehicle;

This is the kind of argument that worries me in the extinction
debate.  I see culture as inherently protean, diffuse and inevitably
changing.  The culture I have now is not the same culture as that of
any of my grandparents.  I also do not make a firm bond between
language and culture.  We see that people can share 'a language' and
have 'different' cultures.  Language also changes as culture changes,
perhaps more so than culture being changed by language.  So this is
not a valid reason for mourning,

>2) The lost opportunity to gather
> corporeal data for linguistic research.

I think this is definitely NOT a valid reason.  Historians might well
want to travel back in time too but I don't think we should look on
people as living data banks.  We have to take on board what another
correspondent called the fact of language change.

> Less valid are political
> considerations, and then there is sheer sentiment  ... in the long view of
> evolutionary history, be it biological or sociological, it will be
> seen that extinctions must needs occur. ... Talking about a species'
> going extinct on account of having been wiped out by man is entirely
> different from talking about the extinction of, say, dinosaurs eons
> before the human species existed.  So, too, is the systematic
> extermination of the speakers of Tasmanian in 1877 a different
> matter altogether from the natural dying out of, say, Hittite.

But the thing to regret here is the dreadfulness of the human
behaviour, and what it implied about British culture.  It's hard to
say what constitutes 'natural' vs 'unnatural' change.  In Singapore,
for example, there has been a gradual process of language shift,
especially a shift from varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin to
Mandarin and to English.  This shift has been encouraged by
government and by changes in the wider world -- it has elements of
the 'natural' and the 'unnatural'.  My personal regret in the shift
has been that there are children who cannot speak to their
grandparents, but that is a loss at the human, individual, level.

What about the gains?  The dreadfulness of slavery gave
rise to the glory of creoles.  So that it is possible to celebrate
creoles without implying praise for the system that alllowed them to
emerge.

Dear me, this is getting very philosophical for a poor sociolinguist.

Anthea
 *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *   *   *
Anthea Fraser GUPTA : http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/$staff/afg
School of English
University of Leeds
LEEDS LS2 9JT
UK
 *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-11-386