LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.28 (05) [A/E]

Tue Nov 29 04:49:06 UTC 2005

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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L O W L A N D S - L * 25 November 2005 * Volume 05
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From: "Obiter Dictum" <obiterdictum at mail.ru>
Subject: LL-L "Languagevarieties" 2005.11.27 (01) [A/E]

Mark Dreyer het geskryf:
> Beste Leee:
>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"
>
> Ek wou net geweet het waar, wanner en hoekom u Afrikaans opgetel het.
Beste Mark:
Ek leer net nog die taal. Nou, op vliegtuie tussen Moskou en Tokio, en op
moltreine
in daardie stede:) Hoekom... Mark, wil u glo, ek weet NIE :).
>
> Maar daar is nog 'n ding wat my prikkel: Dink u dis moontlik dat 'n
> vereenvoudigde, analetiese vorm van Slawoniese taal soos Afrikaans uit
> Laelandse dielakte ooit uit Slawiese dialekte kan ontwikkel?
Ja, Bulgaars:) Dit het eweneens die bepaalde lidwoord.
"Vereenvoudig"? Markkk, is u wel 'n Afrikaner?

Groete,
Leeee

BTW, Ron, again, I don't see your Cyrillics. Instead, some East-European
characters
appear (Bulgaars?:)).
Yeah, my surname spells with one "Ð¸" in Russian (do you see the Cyrillic
"i"?) but
Russian travel passports also have Latin spellings; I just told the
issuing cops to
spell it Leeee rather than Liii.

VVlaaadd
[Vlad Lee]

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

VVlaaadd, bbudddy,

Sorry about the "special" letters.  Something funky is happening with the
encoding at this end in California.  It has nothing to do with the state,
all with the borrowed computer.  I can see *your* Cyrillic fine, though. 
Go figure!

I'll be back in Seattle at my more trusted machines tomorrow night, and
later I'll move them down south to their new home in the sun (experiencing
rain tonight).

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From: "Sandy Fleming" <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language varieties" 2005.11.23 (01) [E]

>From: "Paul Tatum" <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
>Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2005.11.22 (02) [E]
>
>I'd always thought that the structural similarity amongst the world's
>pidgins was due to their selection of the 'basic' elements of syntax,
>discarding all the variant rules which give each of the world's
>languages its distinct and unique character, i.e. pidgin syntax is close
>to the core of Chomsky's universal grammar. AFAIK, the grammars of
>pidgins, such as Chinook, which did not have an indo-european language
>as one of their 'partners' are still similar to the indo-european based
>ones - it seems that it doesn't matter what the partners are/were, the
>resulting pidgin has 'pidgin grammar'.
>
>
>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language varieties
>
>Hi, Paul!
>
>I believe universal grammar is an important part of it, but a lot of
>lexical sharing such as "fellow" as an adjectival marker and counter,
>objective-case pronouns in subject phrases and many more seem to indicate
>that migration and importation played important parts as well.
>
>
An obvious problem with this is that there's no reason to assume that
there is any such thing as a universal grammar.

It's a long time since I read Chomsky, but I believe he (or was it
Paget?) believed that research into the way children learn languages
would provide evidence of a universal grammar. Researchers into
language-learning subsequently came to believe that there was a
universal grammar related to Chomsky's proposed "deep structure" in the
brain - a grammar that made human languages possible only because there
was a structure in the brain representing it - because children in all
places learning all languages showed the same learning patterns.

However, artificial intelligence research has since shown that computer
neural nets show the same language-learning patterns as human children,
so there is after all no evidence for Chomsky's "deep structure" idea.

On the other hand, sign linguists are now researching language isolates
(such as Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language and Nicaraguan Sign Lanuage,
see, eg http://www.boker.org.il/english/newsignlanguage.htm) to try to
determine which common features of languages really are universal and
which arise due to common ancestry. But I suspect that any universal
features will be due to a combination of the way neural nets work and
the limitations of the language medium, and how such things as word
order relate to easy expression of meaning. Of course the brain does
tend to have specialist processing for specialist functions, but
language is perhaps a much later development than eg facial recognition
and such like.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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