LL-L "Grammar" 2011.04.22 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 22 April 2011 - Volume 04
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar"


Beste Marcus,

You wrote:

I guess your observations are basically right, but I don't like how you
charge your report with personal judgement. "deformation", "wrong", "myth"
etc.

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
[<http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen><http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-reformen>
]).

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.


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 ;=)

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.

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.

Not too sure, I want that done to myself, without being asked.

Kind greetings...and...nog ne zalige Påse ;=)

Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium



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