From: ez000281@hamlet.ucdavis.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto,soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: Re: Los nin~os que hablan esperanto
Date: 27 Jan 93 08:35:38 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.esperanto
Organization: Computing Services, UC Davis

Before commenting on Mr. Evans's response I would like to post some experts 
from the Encycolpaedia Brittannica's article on Esperanto; an article writteb 
by a scholar simpathetic to the "movement".  My comments are in Brackets.

Edelmiro
----

"...attempts  at  combining greater simplicity and regularity with greater 
precision and accuracy have produced constructed languages that are derived 
from or based on natural languages."

[As you can see all of these artificial languages are based on natural 
language and are thus parasitic on it.  It seems they have confronted the same 
fate of the logician, who must return again to language in search of new 
inferences upon which to build his logical system]

"In constructed language, both those derived from and those actually based on 
natural languages, a number of common features can be found. (1) they strive 
for simpliticy (being five to 15 times easier to learn than a natural 
language)."

[The author ignores that whereas this fiction of easier "learning" might be 
true, it will also increase in comunicative inefficiency.  All one has to do to 
test this principle of the simpler, the worse, is to try to sanitize natural 
language, say Spanish, from its irregularities, and make it "simple" in the 
learning process of adult speakers.  The end result is that the adult speakers 
have learnt this  Spanish much easier, but are unable to establish a 
conversation of with a Native Speaker of Spanish, and simply babling things 
like:
 
"Yoe seir muy embarasadoe dei seir aquii."

An other sorts of incomprehensible bablings wich are "simple" to learn.]

"(2) They seek to take advantage of previously established language habits 
(those acquired by  the speakers of common European languages: Latin, French, 
English, German, Russian)[...] reducing the number of grammatical categories to 
a minimum consitent with certain freedom of word order, limiting the number and 
variety of sounds to a level not inconsistent with that manifest in these 
European languages."

[As we may see these are old world eurocentric "movements" which have decided 
to plunge the entire world in the absurd ideas of speaking a language with a 
indoeuropean base (syntax -certain free word order, limited gramatical 
categories- phonology -sounds-) So, we are sitting before another imperialist 
attempt from the old world to shove their language down non-indoeuropean 
peoples.  That's why its relatively simple to read Esperanto in the event you 
know romance.  As far as the author is concerned, he seems to be living in the 
linguistics middle ages,for the idea that langauage is a set of "habits" died 
with the linguistic behaviorists, specifically Mr. Bloomfield.  Now what is 
certianly ridiculous is that they somehow have devised a shceme of phonemes for 
esperanto, but they provide no allophic rules in the phonology, in fact we 
don't even know what the fonology is, other than what the fonetic system 
represents and any combination of these thereof is a mystery, for every speaker 
of this invention will evidently have to come up with his own phonology 
(obiously following that of his native language).  So, if they are incapable of 
positing rules for alophonic variation, they certainly will be in problems when 
the time comes to derive strings from other string, or simply propose basic 
rules of phrase structure.]

[The article goes on to state that the "language" has not been recognized 
anywhere in spite of its relatively many adherents (100,000) in local "clubs", 
and later goes on to mention other experiments such as "volapuk", "ido", 
"novial", "interlingua" and other less popular inventions.  What is of interest 
for me, as a semanticist, is that:]

"verbs are all regular, and have only one form for each tense or mood, they 
are not inflected for person number".

[So, this pure and simple language, in which any stutter or sneeze while 
pronouncing a subject pronoun will creat havoc with a listner who will never 
know nominative referece, since verbal morphology will not repeat it, happens 
also to have one form for each tense or mood.  I imagine they has aspectual 
morphemes some place in the picture, or perhaps they have simply eleiminated 
them, and reduced the whole tense system to past, present and future, 
eliminating thus the hundreds of temporal possiblities of natural language.  I 
imagine pronominal clitics and affixal NP arguments have ceased to exist 
withing the verb and that serial verbs and verb complexes have also been 
simplified, especially when the abound in so many forms acrosss languages.  
Given this description, the world for Esperantists must be a very dull and 
simple place too, for they are unable to refer, say to an complex verb such as:

"se me pudo haber quierdo estar matando" 

with only one verb. And in such a case they would need thousands of 
inflections for expressing all possible "tenses".  But since simplicity is the 
name of the game, temporal reference must lay aside with Occam's Esperanto 
razor.  Now, lets leave this asid and answer Mr.Greely]
-------

Mr. Greely says:

>I apologise to the readers of "soc.culture.latin-america", but I do
>feel compelled to reply to the vicious attacks of Edelmiro in the news
>groups in which they appeared. I mention this because I expect many of
>you already have Edelmiro in your kill-files and are therefore reading
>my replies not having seen the original attacks. Please just do a
>"subject kill" if the subject does not interest you. All my replies
>will have the same subject as the original attack.


What's the matter, are you afraid your herd may run astray when they figure 
out that Santa Clause doesn't exist?  I remember I cried 3 days when I finally 
found out.


>Funny you should mention this. I know some people who can read and
>write good Esperanto (how well they speak I can't say because I've only
>met them through the Net), but who are apparently incapable of doing a
>good translation from Esperanto into their native language.
>Esperantists do not *translate* Esperanto. They speak it. They are
>usually just as bad at translating as any other bilingual people who
>have never deliberately studied the difficult art of translation.

Perhaps they are even worse, since the natural languages from which it feeds 
has been "simplified" so much that zillions of possible translations are 
available for each discourse structure.


>It is irrelevant whether the etimology of the words is Indo-European or
>not. A typical speaker is not even aware of the etimology. What matters
>is who defines their meaning and usage. One country that has had a
>disproportionately large influence on the development of Esperanto is
>Hungary, where they don't speak an Indo-European language. There is a
>European bias in Esperanto, a bias that will, one hopes, disappear with
>time, but this bias has nothing to do with etimology; it is because the
>language started its life in Europe.

Sure its relevant, try to sell your product to the Chinese and see if they buy 
it.  As anyone here who speaks Spanish notes, its fairy easy to get the picture 
of what you have written in Esperanto by taking a look at the Latin roots.  
Esperanto started in Europe and has had few fans wherever a non-european 
language is spoken.  Does'nt this say a lot about the ideology of your 
"movement"?

|>Why don't you tell this to the linguists as the CSLI at Stanford.There they
|>spend millions trying to figure out what the grammars of natural languages 
|>are so that they pentagon and other people like XEROX can try to make 
|>machines

>Of course the pronoun "they" refers here to the tax-payers
>(unmentioned), not to the linguists...

Sorry, but the CSLI is primarly funded by XEROX, not by the tax-payers.  They 
don't need "clubs", "associations", or a "movement" to study language.


>Stop using this stupid analogy with Pig Latin. Pig Latin is a coded
>form of another language (English say). Esperanto is not a coded form
>of any other language. 
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

No, it is a coded form of other languageS, not a particular one.

>If anyone thinks it is, they should try to think
>which other language it is supposed to be a coded form of, then try to
>describe the algorithm used to do the coding/decoding. They will fail.

I believe tha article quoted above states that is lives of English, Russian, 
German, and Latin.  Of course, you have confessed below it also lives off 
Hungarian.


>In Esperanto adverbs can take the ending "-n", which in traditional
>terminology is called the "accusative ending".  It may be the case that
>Zamenhof borrowed this idea from some Indo-European language, but that
>has to be irrelevant because most speakers are not aware of the analogy
>with any other language. 

Sure, and most speakers of Spanish are unabwar of the "analogy" of Spanish 
with Portuguese and can easily speak with a Speaker of portuguese in spite of 
the fact they do not know that they are sister languages with a same base.

>Esperanto has its own grammar which is by no
>means "parasitic" on any other language.

Well, I'll take your word on it for a moment.  Could you please indicate in 
the Space below what are the rules for generating a Noun Phrase in Esperanto:

                
                
                
                
                


>I can read Esperanto without a translator. I can write Esperanto
>without a translator. Sometimes I write something in Esperanto and have
>to think very hard to work out how to translate my own words into
>English (my first language).

Of course, its "simplicity" generates an enormous ammount of ambiguity, and by 
the time you decide which is the corresponing English expression, you have 
fallen asleep.  Its funny that you state you have so much difficulty 
translating from Esperanto into English, when I can do the same from Spanish to 
English (any clause whatsoever) in less than a second  Perhaps its 'cause I'm a 
native speaker of both languages.

>It is not true that all Esperanto speakers are convinced about the
>utility of Esperanto. There are several hundred people who speak
>Esperanto because it is their native language but who have no interest
>in the Movement whatsoever. 

Fortunately, Spanish needs no "movement" in order to have 400 million speakers.

>There are also people who have leant the
>language because of scientific interest, 

Certainly not linguists who don't waste their time.

>people who have become
>disillusioned and deserted the Movement,

Just like those who desert any sect...

>and there are even a few
>people who learnt Esperanto because of their job. Plus a few who were
>"forced" to learn Esperanto at school. Quite a lot altogether.

Perhaps we should report those schools who are "forcing" esperanto on children 
to the authorities.  This type of child abuse is unheard of.

[...]

>This difference between "prescriptive" and "descriptive" is stale old
>cant. In practice learners of foreign languages treat the "descritions"
>as "prescriptions", 

Unfortunately it seems you have not learned the difference between the learner 
of a foreign language and a linguist.  Second language teaching involves a 
certain ammount (the least the better) of prescription, but a speaker does not 
"know" the rules of his grammar in order to use it.  I don't need to "know" 
that in Spanish predicate adjectives agree in gender/number with the nominative 
argument in order to utter:

"Los eperantistas estan locos."

I simply say it.  

>and Academies treat the descriptions of how the
>best writers use the language as "prescriptions" for the language in
>general. There isn't really a rigid distinction between the two
>practices.

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 
Joseph Greenberg on the matter.  He happens to be the most respected authority 
on language universals who's around, and can give you a good talk on the 
descriptive nature of the field.
>If Esperanto and English are both coded forms of Albanian (say), then
>probably we can deduce that Esperanto is a simpler code, because
>experiments have shown that people can learn Esperanto faster than
>English. The funny thing is that most of the learners couldn't speak
>Albanian either before or afterwards...

Of course non native of English can learn esperanto faster than English, but 
once they do thay can't communicate with the same efficiency as with English 
(see my comments above on simplicity and lack of communicative efficiency).



>Can you prove this? Were the German codes really so simple that a human
>could process them mentally in real time? 

I guess this is a question which Alan Turing, the father of computation, 
should have answered.

>I can process Esperanto
>mentally in real time, and so can thousands of people I have met.

Apparently no so fast, since you have trouble parsing it into English (see 
above).


>You see, there a lot of words and expressions in Esperanto which I can
>only translate by means of a paraphrase into any of the other languages
>I speak, and I usually have to think quite hard in order to find the
>paraphrase. 

I don't, I can translate Spanish into English simmultaneously.

>I have learnt both German and Esperanto as "foreign
>languages" and know what I am talking about. I speak German with my
>wife (usually) and I think in German when I am speaking German. 

Definitely, that's were the trouble lies.  You're not a native speaker of 
Esperanto (as we can inductively assume for every one in the "movement")

[...]

Edelmiro

Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto