Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Wed, 15 Apr 1992 20:04:20 EDT
 <WORDS-L%UGA.bitnet@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
From:         Fredric <FDOLEZAL%UGA.bitnet@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Reflections on the matter of language change
              15 Apr 1992 16:57:28 CDT from <maynor@RA.MSSTATE.EDU>

On Wed, 15 Apr 1992 16:57:28 CDT Natalie Maynor said:
>>Try this on for size:  Imagine a society that started using the word JEW
>>as a synonym for "evil, dirty rotten, no-good corrupter of our values"
>>Are you saying you can separate the 'linguistic change' from the application
>or
>>usage?
>
>What's wrong in that case is not in language.  It's in the attitudes of
>the speakers.  As I've said repeatedly, I'm not talking about what's
>"right" or "wrong" in a culture.  I'm talking about what works or does
>not work in a language.  A language reflects the needs and desires of
>its speakers.  If the speakers choose to use the word JEW that way,
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
But you see, you are making the humpty dumpty theory of language; 'words
mean what I pay them to mean.'  How would a child acquiring this language
know the difference between cultural imperative and the structure of the
language?  Indeed, after a while, the speakers would naturally feel that
JEW meant .... It would be an inextricable part of the morphosemantic
structure;  it cannot have meaning without being a part of the whole.  Linguist
s describing the language would have to say JEW MEANS dirty rotten, etc. they
would not have the priveledge of saying: "JEW is not a part of the language it
merely is a reflection of the culture."

>it's easy to make moral judgments about them.  You can disapprove all
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^not in my experience of humanity.
>you want to of their need or desire to use language in whatever ways
>they use it.  The language itself is not good or bad, right or wrong.
>
well, people are not right or wrong or good or bad either by this line
of reasoning: their behaviour is bad, but they can find redemption, etc.

>> >I agree that phonological changes are probably not related to
>> >cultural changes.
>> but "language" changing from blah blah blah to grunt grunt is phonological?
>> I think 'culture' here is applied so broadly as to be meaningless.....
>
>Torkel will have to answer that one.  It's his example, not mine.
>
no. you must state how sound change can be unrelated to cultural change and
still hold your argument.  Oh, maybe I get it, you think that language is
divisible into discrete domains?  But that's the theory, not the language?

>> >Intentionality behind language change?  Not usually,
>> >although it's not unheard of.
>> Evidence???
>
>Evidence of which?  Evidence that it's unusual or evidence that it's
>not unheard of?  Assuming the latter, I'll give the U.S. pronunciation
>of "laboratory" as an example.  Noah Webster decided that the U.S. should
>show its independence from England by making its language independent.
>The citizens liked this view, Webster wrote books used in schools, the
>intentional changes in pronunciation occurred.  Or look at some of the
>changes that occurred in eighteenth-century England.  The prescriptivists
>decided that language was like math and that two negatives made a
>positive.  They pushed this view onto enough people to cause the loss
>of multiple negatives in most dialects of English.
>   --Natalie (maynor@ra.msstate.edu)
Now I REALLY need to see your evidence, MOST dialects???  Who's counting?
Double neg's as intensifier abound in my environment, and I dare say in
yours...or has Mississippi been declared a non-english speaking state?

The rarity of the occurance of INTENTIONAL change undermines your point;
the French Academy has been losing this battle for centuries.  Thus, why
bother talking about a rare and marginal phenonomenon.  You might as
well say language is onomatopoeic, because you can find an example or two.
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