From: wagenfuh@huey.udel.edu (Karl Wagenfuehr)
Subject: Re: Los nin~os que hablan esperanto
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 23:28:42 GMT

In article <21874@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> ez000281@hamlet.ucdavis.edu writes:
>For a linguist there is.  A linguist will never tell native speakers of a 
>language: say this like this...  A linguist will study the language to 
>describe, explain, and reproduce the grammar of the speaker.  He want's to 
>study language as his object in the very same way a botanist wants to study 
>flora without telling a flower: Open your petals quickly for its better for 
>your gemination..."  Language Academies are language police.  They see to 
>standardize writing systems and some even try to do the same with speech to no 
>avail.  Language Academies have the mindset of language commisars (just like 
>esperantists), who wish to shove their view of how the language SHOULD be down 
>people's throat.  Linguists, on the contrary, try to figure out what languages 
>ARE.  But if this is too dificult for you to understand, ready any book by 

Yes, yes, that sounds very good and noble, but in the end it is all
nonsense when one realizes that in condeming language academies and
such, you are doing exactly what you proclaim to hate:  You are
PROSCRIBING that language not be allowed to change by concious effort.

Well, I got news for you:  language can and does, constantly, change
by concious decision/effort/awareness.  You might not like it, but it
is a fact of life, and if you truly understood the scientific method,
you would realize that this aspect of human language must be studied
just like all the other aspects if one wishes to approach understanding
of the whole.

Sure, botanists can study plants and not interfere with what they are
studying; it would be quite a different story if it were the plants
studying themselves!

When we study ourselves, we must, as a first principle, realize that
we cannot truly be objective -- the very act of studying ourselves
changes ourselves.  If we study language, that means that we are
AWARE of language.  If we are aware of language, what is then
"natural", and what is "artificial"?  Language is something humans
produce -- whether prosciption plays a part in what is produced is
not in your domain to critisize if you are studying the language
produced.  Further, prosciption need not always have a positive
effect; the fact that it has an effect is the crucial point.  

There are many examples where awareness of language has changed
the production of language.  Obvious examples are such things as
the re-introduction of Hebrew as a spoken language.  That could not
have happened wihtout a lot of AWARE people tinkering around.  Are
you going to now PROSCRIBE Hebrew as not worthy of linguistic study?
Humans produce it, but because I don't like the way it came about, I
refuse to acknowledge it?

What about more subtle things?  The language of advertisers for example.
The language they choose for their slogans is clearly chosen quite care-
fully, and with full awareness of the process.  Are you going to deny
the effect that advertising language has on the language at large?  In
German there are many examples of where the advertising languge (purposely
with full awareness made to be more like English) has creeped into the
language at large.  A trivial example that pops to mind right now is
the word "twen", which has come to mean someone in his/her twenties.
It is pronounced as it would be in English (ie: the "w" is does not
sound like the english "v"); it is an advertising word, made-up (because
it doesn't exist in English) to sound American, and it is in the general
usage now.  This is trivial, and there are more significant changes
noticable in syntax and grammer.

How about Mike Myers choosing to make famous a new form of negation
in English with the "Wayne's World" "Not!"?  By popularizing this
speech form on a popular TV show and hit movie, it has now effectively
entered general English.  I'm sure that Mike Meyers was to some
extent aware of what he was doing.  Certain people have a great
platform from which to PROSCRIBE language, and I'm sure most of them
are aware of it.  If broadcast networks decide to eliminate or
replace or even instigate some speech form, they have an effective
platform to do so, and they will have an effect (whether positive
or negative is irrelavant).

Or how about the recent tendancy in [American] English to use
the subject form instead of the object form after prepositions?
("Between he and I" "This is for you and he to decide")  How did
that come about?  A very plausable explanation is that this shift in
English came about as a direct result of PROSCIPTION, though not
as intended.  The proscriptists were constantly correcting things
such as "Me and him went fishing," and other uses of the object
form instead of the subject form.  These prosciptists made a lot
of noise.  Everyone was conscious of the fact that people claimed
that using "me" in certain places was "wrong".  So hence the
shift.  Whenever speaking "properly", it is wrong to use "me",
and so "I" is used instead.  Soon this usage moved on to be used
in not only "proper" situations, but as common speech.  I have
witnessed this gradual change over the last 5 to 10 years.  At first,
I only noticed it in speeches, places where people were trying to
be "correct" (CONSCIOUSLY altering the way they speak), to now
where people do it all the time, unawares.  From the conscious to
the unconscious.  Or are you going to deny that this is a plausible
explanation for this occurence?

The fact remains that you cannot remove the conscious awareness people
have of language production, nor can you distingish between "natural"
and "unnatural" language production.  If humans, with no contaminations
from the outside (aliens, God) produce it, then it must be "natural".
Are the nests birds build not natural?  Are beaver damns not natural?

Were I a truly objective observer and studier of human language
production (which would necessitate my not being human), I would 
have to study all human productions in the field of language; if
humans produced it, it is natural.  Whether they consciously produced
it or unconsciously produced it would be totally and completely
irrelevant, and really impossible to differentiate in most cases.
Maybe after careful study I might be able to come up
with criterea that distinguish the two, or maybe not.

We are stuck being humans, however, so we can never fully emulate
this objectivity.  But we can certainly do better than making such
obvious fallacies as proscribing that proscription not be allowed.
-- 
                    ' ",      *
Karl Wagenfuehr         ,         "Weisst du, wieviel Sternlein stehen an dem
wagenfuh@huey.udel.edu  ,  '      blauen Himmelszelt?"  --Deutsches Volkslied
                          '