From: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Subject: Re: typology of Esperanto
Originator: alderson@leland.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson)
Organization: Stanford University Academic Information Resources
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 17:50:07 GMT

In article <1992Aug24.202419.9164@spss.com>, markrose@spss (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Aug23.190212.107@leland.Stanford.EDU> alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
>>I have to admit that I haven't read it.  I'd have appreciated a quick summary
>>rather than a reference, but I'll check this out now that I have some time.
>
>Usually I get in trouble for *not* providing a reference.  Oh well.

I intended to type "rather than simply a reference" but must have gotten ahead
of my fingers.

[Informative summary deleted for space.  It's started its own little side
discussion, anyway... ]

>Now, how does this apply to Esperanto and IE?  Well, it's clear that you
>see IE as a clear-cut, binary-membership category.  You are certainly entitled
>to do so.  I simply find your usage, though meaningful enough within 
>historical linguistics, unsatisfactory when considering language in general.
>I'd see "IE" languages as composed of a core class of languages (all good
>examples) plus some more farfetched examples (the ostriches or bad examples):

What you want to do is to take a precisely defined technical term from
historical and comparative linguistics, "Indo-European language," and re-apply
it to mean something else entirely.  Expect that I shall continue to object
every time you do, because to do otherwise impairs the usefulness of the
technical term.

>goodness of
>example    category              IE example                non-IE example
>                       
>great      natural languages     English,Russian,Latin     Chinese,Arabic
>medium     pidgins etc.          Papiamentu,Krio           Swahili?
>bad        artificial languages  Esperanto,Interlingua     Solresol
>rotten     computer languages    Fortran,Pascal            APL?

I would set up a series of overlapping categories, without the value judgments:

	 +-
Natural	 |Regularly-derived
language |Pidgin/Creole			-+
	 +-		CLIFHC*		 | artificial
			computer language| language
					-+

where there is some indication that pidgins are constructs, but not in the same
way that Esperanto or Solresol are.  CLIFHC is "constructed language intended
for human communication"--I decided that my original label "quasi-language"
*was* a value judgment.
			
>It should be noted that, according to prototype theory, we normally reason
>about categories based on the best members, not the worst.  We are more
>likely (right or wrong) to think that what's true of robins is true of 
>chickens than vice versa.  So when we think about IE languages we'd tend to
>have English or Sanskrit rather than Papiamentu or Haitian Creole in mind,
>and we wouldn't tend to apply conclusions about Papiamentu or Esperanto
>to IE languages in general.  

Depends on the conclusions in question.  Those who claim that Indo-European was
some kind of creole (or that Hittite was, for that matter) would be well-
advised to examine Papiamentu.  (The same could not be said for Esperanto.)

>It's questionable whether computer languages can be considered even rotten
>examples of IE languages-- but then they're bad examples of languages, period.
>The use of "language" to describe them is in fact an excellent example
>of a prototype effect.  They are languages in an extended sense, and are
>non-ideal examples of languages.  The only way to deal with them in classical
>terms would be to relax the definition of what a language is, and declare
>French and Fortran equally good examples of it; surely this offends most
>people's intuitions.

There is no intuitive definition of an Indo-European language, only one
constructed on the basis of historical and comparative linguistics.  If the
technical definition were a refinement of a folk definition (as "computer codes
are called languages because they resemble human languages" would be), I would
have no problem with your attempted extension of it into areas in which it is
not appropriate.

>>To take a classic example, do you consider English to be a Germanic language,
>>or a Romance language, or even a Hellenic one?  After all, more of the
>>extended vocabulary of English is derived from Latin (via Norman French or
>>not) and Greek than from Proto-Germanic.
>
>I think the prototype approach works very well here.  The prototypical 
>example of a Germanic language would surely be German, not English.
>Both are Germanic, but German is a better example of Germanic.

I happen to think that English is just as good a Germanic language as German
(pace David Pesetsky), since very nearly all the borrowed lexical items are
inflected as if they were good Germanic words.  The fact that English
morphology has leveled a good bit makes it no less Germanic than German.

I expect that none of this will have any weight with you, but I am willing to
go on arguing as long as you are.
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_
Xref: sparky sci.lang:6762 alt.usage.english:6970 soc.culture.usa:6922