Boy it’s all yes and no with you guys, isn’t it? 
I’ll take the ‘yes.’
I do appreciate your efforts, and promise to study whatever you find. Don’t put yourself out. The Pinker is on its way.
What are you doing still up? I’m going to crash. See ya.
Actually I got about four or five hours of sleep last night cuddled up with mah girl. Best rest a man can get 
Sleep well. Check ya lata.
Well, yes. Vocabulary is a different beast from grammar. Learning what a thing is called is different from learning how to express a desire for that thing. Children pick up on “This is a spoon” much more readily than “To ask for something, you say ‘give me that’.” The latter is really only learned through observing someone say “Give me the apple” and seeing that they do, in fact, get an apple.
Actually, the fun part is that yes, they do develop a language of their very own. It just happens to be an extremely close analog to the languages everyone around them speaks. A child’s brain takes the input from their environment and deduces what the correct rules must be. Most of the time it’s accurate, but sometimes they don’t get the whole picture, and a few of their rules end up being different from the equivalent rule their parents use.
These little fluctuations tend to be where confusion and ambiguity happens, I would guess. In my language, “literally” is used as an intensifier, whereas in your language, it isn’t. This is partially how dialects are formed, and how creoles are formed out of pidgins. The child grows up speaking what he thinks is correct, though it may vary just slightly from his parents’ language, and as he passes his language onto his children, they have their own language which is just a little more different. Each person’s language is close enough to each other, however, that they can communicate effectively almost all the time.
And in a sense “knowed” is right, because that is what the rules says. To form the past tense of a verb you add “ed” to them. It is only irregular verbs that need to be taught. There is also an argument that the language was changing to allow “knowed” to be valid and it is only with the rise of prescriptive grammerians that “known” has remained the “proper” form of the verb. Tracing back the language you can see evolution of other verbs which had irregular tenses becoming regularised.
Absolutely. In fact, it’s this kind of thing that shows children are learning the language internally. If they were honest to god being taught it, they would never use constructions liked “knowed” and “goed” and so on, because they never hear adults using those words. They do hear “Pooh played with Piglet” and other regular verbs, and they pick up that this rule exists. Once the rule is in place, they overapply it before they figure out that there are exceptions to that rule.
Sure there is: Language changes over time, and there are certainly dialects. Some people, within a language, and within a particular dialect, use words improperly as defined by what the subgroup agrees upon, is NOT the same as “every native speaker cannot misuse a word.”
Of course they do, but pray tell me, how listening to thousands of hours of grammatical/syntatical patterns in speech prove that native speakers of a language cannot mispeak a word or misuse a defintion. Relative of course, to their agreed upon language.
Yet not a single mention of your theory of how a single speakers can not be wrong in a defintion, grammar usage, or pronunciation. (again, always speaking in relative terms, since you seem to be batting away at the strawman that my argument is about some universal language)
Those that use relativity as proof of a field outside of physics is using psuedoscience to prove a point. The two fields are not interlinked, or is there some grand unifiying theory between physics and linguistics that I am unaware?
Sociology, pyschology and linguistics are pretty much universally considered a soft science. Most universities have it set up this way, and I have learned it as such in several of my classes. It is not my defintion, nor was I simply being inflamatory.
No, where talking about only one thing here, or I am, I don’t know what you are talking about: I say it is BS that A native speaker (Singlular) cannot be mispronounce or misuse a word nor make grammatical errors. I am not arguing that there are not subgroups of language (dialects, etc, obviously there are), I am arguing that that one statement is loony, not that linguistics is a useless field. The ivory tower reference was to those that argue this point. If that is the whole field of linguistics, and you can show that it is the case then I will conceed my point. However, many fields have competing theories that have equal amounts of wieght or evidence (nature vs nurture in some cases for example), and I highly doubt that this “theory” holds any weight in linguistics, but you can feel free to show me up.
Let see: I argue that statement A is false, statement A falls into a category of linguistics, of which you make up an argument in which I am nay saying an entire field, when all I am saying is statement A is false. Who is using a strawman?
No, I don’t think we conciously change it, it obviously is a very dynamic and involved process that occurs with no effort from individuals. Your posts on this point have filled me in. What you seem confused about is what I am arguing about. None of your links have supported your assertion, nor disproved mine. All you have shown is that linguistics as a field is pretty ubiquious.
Again, not what I am arguing.
Apples and Oranges.
Not what I am saying.
Quantum mechanics proves its assertions, this “every native speaker has his own individual language and is never wrong about usage or prounciation, even though it be internally inconsistant- pronounces it right 3/4 of the time, wrong 1/4 the time.”
I think you WANT this to be my argument. Granted my posts were full of vitrol, which is inexcusable, but still, this is NOT my argument.
Yes, it is an admission of ignorance. But it doesn’t matter by your own admission. I am a native speaker of English, of some dialect, and I observe and hear it every single day, so it’s not like I have elementary school education trying to disprove a calculus teacher. I don’t know the ins and outs, sure, but I know enough to recognize pure grade bullshit when I smell it. Sometimes things that aren’t BS smell like it, but not a single one of your links suggests that this is a prevalent theory.
And to further my cause of proclaiming ignorance, I don’t really have time to wade through all the works of the prevelant thinkers in linguistics and find this idea that “every single speaker can never mispronounce words or misuse grammar.”
So, I know it is hard to be civil with me even though I have been a hardass dick, I would ask that you provide a solid citation that shows that this thought has strong support in your field.
That too much to ask?
Again: My premise is this: A person within his own subgroup of language, be it dialect or whatnot, can mispronounce words, misuse words denotions, or be grammatically incorrect. There is no absolute language, just what is commonly agreed upon. One person is not a commonly agreed upon group sufficient to have its own dialect. They are just wrong.
That’s prescriptivism; whether it’s on the scale of a million people or just one dialect, as long as you’re saying that more people make a judgement correct.
But has already been said, of course people have brain farts, that goes without saying. But any native speaker will literally be hardwired with Universal Grammar. Whatever dialect or sub-dialect or sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-dialect they use will have its own consistent rules of grammar. Just because someone in another sub-dialect would say they’re ‘wrong’ doesn’t mean that they are. If you’re interested, you might want to do some research into the dialects collectively known as Texas German.
Once you’ve loaded the question with your prescriptivism “relative of course…”?
But if we ignore that, then yes, linguists can study the frequency, usage, placing, etc… of morphemes .
And again, nobody has said that a native speaker can’t by accident say ‘turkey’ when he means ‘chicken’. But a native speaker will not say “Chicken? I lots it like.”
Not in so many words, no… but that site that you’re responding to in this quote did indeed point out that they were studying language as it is not as prescriptivists want it to be.
Maybe you really don’t realize that you’re talking about a universal language? It’s no strawman. Taking a position that what X number of people agree upon is ‘correct’ makes that Absolutely Correct, rather than something that a few more people happen to have in common.
Now: of course people can be wrong in terms of definition, that’s vocabulary and really has virtually nothing to do with the actual mechanics of language. They cannot make an error in grammar, because every dialect has its own inherent rules.
If someone says “Finn? He be wordy!” it would be considered ‘ungrammatical’ in SAE, but perfectly acceptable in AAVE. Which of them is ‘correct?’ Neither.
As for pronunciation, you are again perhaps unwittingly subscribing to a notion of Absolute Correctness. If a Canadian pronounces a word “A-boot” while we pronounce it “A-bout” that doesn’t make the Canadian ‘wrong’ and us ‘right’. Hopefully you can see how this principle applies no matter how many people are involved in varying dialects.
I hope you understand that it’s rather difficult to explain the methodology and findings of more than 100 years of linguistics research on a message board, especially to someone who’s hostile to the knowledge. This should give you a better feel for how linguists work, I hope.
I’m not using it to prove anything. Merely pointing out that relativity (small r) applies in both situations as there is no Absolute; I was drawing a rough parralel, not a 1-1 correlation. In this case it really is binary. If it’s not Absolute, then it’s not. If it is, then it is. Relativity also ‘sounds crazy’ as it says there’s no such thing as Absolute Direction. Linguistics also ‘sounds crazy’ as it says there’s no such thing as Absolute Correctness.
Based on the definition you gave, linguistics is a hard science as it deals with quantative measurement of data. That it is ‘pretty much universally’ considered to be something is merely a bandwagon fallacy.
By accident? Yes… as has already been said in this thread. But unless they have a ‘slip of the tongue’? Then no, it’s impossible. Would a native English speaker, ever say “Dog pretty like I the.”
But that’s the thing, you can’t study language the way you’re proposing. If you go at it as a prescriptivist all you’ll find is that there is a vast array of natural language that doesn’t fit into your model. What good does that do anybody? Linguists aren’t supposed to engage in linguistic chauvinism. They aren’t supposed to say that just because X pepople speak one way, and X+1 people speak another, that X people are ‘wrong’. It’s just different.
I’m supposed to show you what the ‘whole field’ of linguistics? Do you need any stables cleaned? Maybe I should fight a hydra?
The best resource I’ve given you so far are the Pinker articles. I’d advise you to read them.
See, this is really fucking frustrating. I have provided links to literally dozens of Pinker’s papers. It seems you haven’t read them. So your doubt as to it holding any weight is the same as someone who is uneducated about any other science with counterintuitive results.
“This “theory” that a photon is both a wave and a particle at the same time? I highly doubt that this ‘quantum mechanics’ fantasy holds any weight in physics, but you can feel free to show me up.”
Please read the materials provided. Pinker’s Grammar Puss article which I linked to seperately is a very good jumping off point.
Linguistics is the study of actual language use, not, for the most part, what high school teachers have in little dull manuals. Your refusal to see or accept that is indeed gainsaying linguistics. “I just disagree with this ‘quantum mechanics’ stuff, I don’t disagree with physics or its methodology.”
Read what Pinker wrote. Pick any article that you think might deal with this topic at hand, and read it. I honestly don’t know how you can say they don’t agree with me.
It’s not internally inconsistant! That’s the point!!!
Yes, native speakers can misspeak, but when shown their sentences they will mark them as ungrammatical-in-their-eyes.
Yes, you are the absolute authority in your dialect or sub-dialect. Why you think that authorizes you to say what’s ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ for other sub-dialects is still beyond me.
Not at all. All you’re saying is that in your sub-dialect, certain things would be ‘wrong’. And that is useful, as it will tell us about the mechanics of your sub-dialect. But it tells us nothing about someone else’s sub-dialect. Someone who might very well say that yours is ‘wrong’. Who should we trust? If there are more speakers of AAVE than SAE, are we then ‘wrong’?
Bullshit. And with that I doubt you’ve even read any of my links. Chomsky refers to prescriptive grammar as something that goes against nature but should be learned becasue it is a cultural artifact. Pinker goes into great detail on why prescriptive grammar is a hobgoblin. The Linguistic Society of America site I linked you to is chocked full of the same things.
I mean, hell, the Grammar Puss article deals specifically with why prescriptivism is flawed. How on earth does that not support exactly what I’ve been saying?
Yes, someone can ‘misuse’ a word. But if, when shown that sentence they do not feel it is incorrect, then under their dialect it is correct. Maybe not under yours, but it is under theirs. And of couuuuuuuuuurse people can misspeak and make wrong word use choices, but the only grammar that is violated is prescriptive grammar. Which is not a real ‘error’. It’s just a violation of some rather arbitrary rules. Like if you wrote up a handbook in your basement and claimed that anybody who didn’t follow its pointless rules was making ‘grammatical errors.’
Well… as I’ve already done it? The cite I provide at the beginning of this post should be about as basic as it get. But, honestly, if you “have time to wade through all the works of the prevelant thinkers in linguistics” it’s rather selfish of you to expect me to not just do that, but then distill it and convey it to you in a manner that someone with no training in the field will understand.
In other words, if you won’t even meet me half way it’s not my responsibility. If you read the texts I provided, especially Pinker, maybe you can ask questions about it.
Mispronounce and misuse by accident, yes. But when presented with those statements they won’t support them and would mark them as ‘wrong’ under their dialect. And, again, the only way they could make a sentence that’d be grammatically incorrect is if they were fucked up on some drug where saying things like “Dog like that I” sounds normal. As for making errors in prescriptive grammar, that doesn’t count because, again, it’s an arbitrary rule list that seeks to impose itself on language, rather than taking cues and patterns from language.
If there’s no absolute language, there can be no right and wrong. That’s the whole damn point. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Having something ‘commonly agreed upon’ means that. Only that. Not one jot more. And yes, individuals can and have had their own dialects, even their own languages. If you take a pair of children who have a play language, and feed one to a tiger, the other still has a fully functional language, even if it’s ‘commonly agreed’ that their language is ‘just gibberish’ and ‘wrong.’
So there is no middle ground at all eh? It’s either Socialism or Libertarianism?
It’s the accidents that concern me, and the special cases. Poster A makes a blanket statment about how nobody is wrong. But if Bob the Builder is quoting Shakespere, and quotes him wrong, he IS wrong. If Jack Ripperson is refering to a literary piece and misquotes it, no matter how consistantly, he is wrong. (wrong meaning he is misquoting it)
See, the problem I have with your explaniation isn’t in the whole, but the specifics. Yeah, I get your points, but think there is a line somewhere. You like to come into threads and derail them with this postmodernism sounding stuff (which is exactly how it sounds “nobody is wrong,” “all opinions are valid,” etc. In this case I agree it is probably a lost cause. Language has moved on, and even many of (us) the prescriptionists agree that the meaning has shifted. However, mathmatical terms, biological terms and literary terms, things refering to objective facts, should not change. You take it this far though. You claim there isn’t a middle ground, and I say that this should be it. Facts are independent of language, and for convience sake, there is some sort of universal standard necessary. Now this isn’t saying it occurs naturally, but it is necessary.
Your constant derailment of fun and humorous threads is what causes my hostility, not because I am afraid of the Truth.
Somehow I think you are being disingenious. Not to sound hostile any further, but seriously. You have on numerous occasions come in with your spiel about postmodernist linguistics (my new def. for this theory), but now you come out and say this isn’t about defintions? THAT is what I am arguing about. Defintion is where I have my beef with the whole thing. You and your ilk (linguists, hehe, sorry) have countlessesly disagreed with my distaste over people misusing scientific terms incorrectly (the best example is the prevelance of people thinking Schitzophrenia (sp?) is multiple personality), or people misusing the literary term Sour Grapes. Both of which are defintions. So, if you have no problem with them, why am I arguing with you? I am no grammar nazi or pronunciation policeman. I pronounce things wrong (tongue in cheeck of course) constantly and consistantly without even being aware of it. So does everybody.
Well, now that you put it that way, it does seem pretty absurd. I promise I will read some of the articles you suggest. It does sound interesting, just this week is hectic. I had a chemistry test today, I have a calculus test Thursday, a research quiz friday and a biochemistry test next week. So some intense reading of a subject in which is pretty highbrow takes a bit more mental effort than picking up a magazine. More than I can spare this week anyhow.
I do conceed, and feel pretty stupid for arguing, since we really weren’t at odds. My whole take on the thing was that you were proposing some postmodernistic ideal in which any word meant anything they wanted it to mean. You can use Zygote to mean running, or enzyme to mean a sexual act. As long as 1 person thought it was, it was. Can you see how silly that seems to me? Especially in fields where there is a universal “language” (mathmatics).
Well, I’m not sure wave mechanics is really quantum mechanics, but I suppose it could be considered so. Either way, its probably not a great example because I can find direct quotes about the topic in both physics textbooks and chemistry textbooks, so it probably isn’t hard to show you. I mean, I wasn’t asking for a summation or formal proof, just something that stated “Postmodernist Linguistics” is a core component of modern theory… blah blah. Could be anything, A smallish, single paragraph quote from some textbook perhaps.
But it isn’t necessary now, because truely I see what you are saying. As long as you agree that people can be wrong in definitions of things, especially those which are considered pretty static (such as in sciences and maths in particular), I have no problems, and pretty much agree. (Based on what I know at the given time of course, learning more will likely solidify that agreement)
I will hold you to that statement unless you decide to retract it, btw. 
Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.
No, your interpretation is the exact opposite of what I was trying to say. Sorry if I wasn’t clear. The fussy geologist is scolding the axe-making craftsman for trying to deliberately shape his rocks for a particular conscious purpose, instead of just using the rocks as they occur naturally. Similarly, some linguists seem to scold language-user prescriptivists for consciously supporting prescriptive rules, rather than just accepting all new linguistic usages as they evolve.
I respect the scientific mission of linguists to study languages as they naturally develop without labeling those developments “right” or “wrong”. And I agree that linguists shouldn’t try to be prescriptive about grammar, because it simply distorts their study of what language actually is.
However, I reject the notion that linguists have any right to forbid ordinary users of language to be prescriptive about grammar. If a group of language users deliberately chooses to reject a certain linguistic change to preserve a usage that’s considered more logical or appropriate, they’re entitled to do that. So what if the change was a natural linguistic development? Lots of things occur naturally that human beings nonetheless choose to override or evade for their own deliberate purposes.
And like you, I do think that prescriptivist nit-picking is generally more appropriate in written language than in spoken language.
Do you agree that this sentence is equivalent to saying, “However, I reject the notion that linguists have any right to forbid ordinary users of language to be forbid other ordinary users of language to use it in particular wasy”? If not, what is the difference?
As I see it, for a salad-fork rule (thanks for the correction, by the way!) to be useful, it needs to have a compelling value, make things significantly clearer or more elegant than they would otherwise be. The rule that the ultimate item in a list should be preceded by a comma has such value, and so it’s a rule that I advocate. The rule that “literally” may not be used metaphorically has no such value: the circumstances under which its metaphorical use causes confusion are very rare, and the loss of its use as a metaphoric intensive is a real loss, as the metaphoric use carries a certain lovely (often humorous) connotation that no other word exactly mimics.
Even if I were to adopt the “literal literally” rule, I’d easily recognize that not everyone agrees with my judgment on the rule’s value; and if someone else used it metaphorically, I’d literally blow no gasket over it.
Contrapuntal, I am delighted that you’ve ordered The Language Instinct. You’re gonna love it–even if you hate everything Pinker stands for, the book is a wonderful, thought-provoking read.
Daniel
Besides, that is, my idiotic typo in the last word. :smack:
Daniel
Of course linguists have no right to forbid people to be prescriptive - people can do what they want. But linguists have every right to state their findings and give recommendations based on them, and part of those findings are that, not only are prescriptive rules worthless for the scientific study of data, they are also useless for “overriding or evading” natural changes in language, and they can in fact be an impediment to the learning of clear communication through writing or even speech. Yes, it is desireable for all students in the United States to be familiar and comfortable enough with SAE to learn in it, but this has nothing to do with the prescriptive rules of SAE.
Further, prescriptivist rules are VERY revealing as to who has the power in society. Sure, people should be able to override or evade certain natural changes in language for their own deliberate purposes, right? And they do it by making rules, right? Well, here’s the question: who gets the right to make the rules? Anyone who wants to? Not hardly. Tell me, which of these sentences is prescriptively correct:
a: Finn? He’s always wordy.
b: Finn? He be wordy.
Now another question: who speaks the dialect in which sentence a would be spoken? Who speaks the dialect in which sentence b would be spoken?
This is the social problem with prescriptivism. The people in power make the rules, and are able to use them as yet another reason to draw classist and racist boundaries. Poor people speak Cockney because they’re too stupid and uneducated to speak proper language. Black people speak AAVE because they’re too ignorant and undereducated to learn “real English.” Prescriptivist rules help to perpetuate these and related cultural memes about who’s “right” and who’s “wrong.” And when a change that’s part of a dialect generally perceived to be lower-class starts making its way through the speakers of the language, the prescriptivists go NUTS! Simply observe the horror of grammaticians at the AAVE slang that’s made its way into SAE and you’ll be seeing what I’m referring to.
As I said before, it is perfectly reasonable to expect students who speak AAVE to be familiar and comfortable with speakers of SAE (and vice versa, for that matter). But instead of being told “You should know this because sometimes the way you speak is a little different, and you should know how to communicate with other people in our society,” they get “You need to learn this because the way you speak is WRONG.” Is that helpful? Hell no!
The icing on the cake of all this is that, not only is prescriptivism potentially harmful, it’s fundamentally useless! No matter how much effort you put into it, you have no measurable effect whatsoever on the way people actually speak. Why continue wasting your breath? Arguments about an older usage being more logical or appropriate are silly. Language doesn’t care about logic or appropriateness (which are generally arguments advanced against those lower-class dialectical changes I was talking about). Language cares about what actually works. If people start using it, generally speaking, it means it works just fine! The change of a language into a different form is inevitable and unstoppable, so why make such a fuss about it when you aren’t going to make jack shit kind of difference anyway? That’s what I’d like to know.
If I may play with Kimstu’s analogy, here’s the way I see the situation:
- The first hunter makes an arrowhead through flaking obsidian.
- The second hunter makes an arrowhead through chipping granite.
- The first hunter looks at the second hunter and says, “You idiot! What the hell’s wrong with you? What sort of ignoramus makes an arrowhead from granite? You’re doing it all wrong!”
- The scientist steps in and says, “Actually, we’ve studied arrowheads extensively, and granite ones are just as effective in a hunt as obsidian ones.”
- The first hunter says, “Who the hell are you? What, so if I make my arrowhead out of cat poop, are you going to tell me that that works just as well? This is why we hunter-gatherers are dying out, you know, it’s cultural relativists like you!”
- The scientist says, “Actually, hunter gatherers have never been doing better than–”
- “You stupid ivory-tower pinheads! Why are you so intent on ruining the hunt?”
And so on and so forth.
Daniel
(no expert on arrowhead-making, so don’t look too closely at that part of the analogy)
Before you read any further, you might want to check out some of what I posted about the relationship between semantics and language.
In terms of ontology?
Well, that’s semantics, not linguistics.
Of course the truth value of a statement can be false while the statement itself obeys inherent gramatical/syntactical/usage rules which are consistent.
My apologies, I will stop posting my thoughts if they differ from a group of posters and/or if they might sound ‘postmodern’ to you. I beg your forgiveness.
It’s like trying to stop the sand at the edge of the tide from wet by the water by blowing on the water, like trying to stop evolution for a while ‘cuz it’s comfy. It’s a lil’ harder than probably a lost cause.
First, what do you define as ‘literary terms’?
Second, Mathamatics is its own language and the last time I checked it’s grammar, syntax, morphemes, etc… are guarded rather jealously from any disturbance, wouldn’t you say? It is also a written language, which is a different beasty.
Third, terms in all the sciences are, to a degree, jargon. We don’t refer to phlogiston or aether anymore. One day we thought of solid matter, then the next of probability clouds; necessitating a shift away, as Relativity did, from just how we could go about talking about Universe.
Fourth, objective facts aren’t always.
Any measurement relies on the instrument used, and the person doing the interpreting. With different instruments and different observers, different vantage points can be gained.
Facts are, but sometimes we can represent them incorrectly via language, and sometimes we don’t have the language to describe the facts. But, yes,pidgins spring up all the time. I’ve already said that SAE has advantages, while advantage does not equal ‘correct’.
But this does help me understand a bit more about why the metric system never caught on here. Well, besides the massive costs to industry to recalibrate all their devices
Again, please allow me to beg your pardon for posting in threads on topic if it does not amuse you. Maybe a ‘fun and humerous thread’ might be better suited to CS, MPSIMS, etc…?
I weep bitter tears of regret at your lack of belief. And wear ashes and sackcloth. Definitely sackcloth.
Yes.
linguistics != semantics
I’ve never argued for the misuse of accepted medical terminology, but I would point out that even there, terminology, meaning, usage etc… change over time.
I’d question also your reliance on cannon, and just what literary terms you believe are worth preserving and why. I’m not quite sure where you’re coming from there. Elaborate if you please.
Well, that’s neat.
As a side note, mathamatics has its inbult cabal of linguists who specialize in the analysis of the language; its rules, its exceptions, its unifying principles, its terminology… we generally call them mathamaticians.
See that’s the thing though… I don’t have any intro textbooks in my collection, and even that’s in storage. I don’t have unlimited time to search the 'net for a soundbyte either.
What I do have are cites which demonstrate the methodology at work, which in turn informs the conclusions.
If by wrong you mean indecipherable to a native speaker of another dialect, then yes, I’d agree.
Finnagain, do you agree with me that a useful judge of the power of a linguistic exchange is whether the audience understood the concept that the speaker attempted to communicate?
Epimetheus, do you think that, if I say, “I was Zygote all day, and now I’m tired,” I am likely to have my audience understand the concept that I am attempting to communicate?
Your depiction of linguistics in statements like the above looks to me like willful ignorance. It’s not like the standard I offer above hasn’t been offered in this thread before.
Daniel
Well, to quibble I’d have to say that the ultimate power of a linguistic exchange exists both to the degree to which the language conveyed meaning and facilitated understanding and/or empathy… balanced with the degree to which language can be deceptive if deceit or evasion is the goal.
(yeesh!)
But yes, in soundbyte form “The economic and cultural value of a communication between two or more people is massively augmented by raising the signal to noise ratio.”
My mistake, I focused on the wrong part of the analogy. I thought it had something to do with the fact that a round stone is bad. I can pontificate for hours on language, but I’m hopeless with tools. I actually more or less agree with LHoD’s take on it; that’s a much closer analogy. Language has to be formed by humans. Any one language isn’t “naturally occurring.” And there isn’t one right way of forming a language. Latin’s infinitives cannot be split; English’s infinitives can be violently split. Obsidian might hold its edge longer, but flint might be easier to carve. Something like that.
Likewise, LHod is spot on about conventions needing to be useful. One of the biggest culprits of prescriptivism is not ending sentences in prepositions. Is this really not understandable: “Who are you buying that for?” Further, does it mean anything different than “For whom are you buying that?” Perhaps it makes a difference to some people, but I haven’t encountered such. The only supposed difference is that it sounds, I dunno, more educated, cultured, etc. That’s because we’ve been raised practically from birth to think of such formations that way; it has nothing to do with the inherent syntax of the sentence. It’s for the same reason we think a British accent is refined and regal, even while a Cockney accent is a commoner’s. However, there is no inherent value in such a rule, and it even makes some sentences really convoluted and difficult to phrase. Thankfully, that’s one rule that’s on its way out the door, in my estimation. The language is not harmed by losing it unless you see losing it as harming the language, which is circular.
I don’t necessarily have the stamina to keep up with this discussion, so I’m just more or less rambling here.
All of this depends on the fallacy that there is only one grammar and we must argue over its definition. Even Pinker says in his book that he means something ELSE by grammar than what copyeditors and gradeschool teachers mean. And although he utters a big “phooey” to the grammar establishment, one supposes Pinker relied on the expertise of copyeditors to save him from looking like an ass. Even if he doesn’t hire copyeditors, he relies on his education, which is extensive.
This isn’t a matter of informed vs. ignorant. It’s two different forms of ignorance. One ignorance is not knowing how linguists look at language. The other ignorance is supposing that because one has learned – presumably in Linguistics 101 – that linguists have a different meaning of grammar, the old meaning of grammar has vanished. One grammar describes language, the other prescribes it, but neither cancels the other one out. I reckon even Dorkness and Again run their resumes by someone when they’re applying for jobs. It’s all well and good under the cover of Internet darkness to thumb your nose at the grammarians, but in the end we all humbly check in with our Strunk & White and worry about looking like rubes. We avail ourselves of the shibboleths of the educated class.
The biggest ignorance is supposing either is the One True Grammar. Both have meaning, and, more importantly, both have utility.
In the ongoing caveman analogy, I would have present-day primitives making their axes out of dried turds, and a different tribesman approach trying to explain that stone works better. The would-be craftsman shudders and dismisses the man with the stone.
“We had an anthropologist with us for years,” he says, “and he said all technologies are sufficient to the needs of their culture.”
“But look,” says the other tribesman, doing much more efficient work with his stone tool.
“You’ve obviously never studied anthropology,” says the first man, and continues hacking away with the turd.
Evolution of language is sort of like natural evolution: there’s no guarantee the final result will be better than before. It’s certainly possible to “devolve”, such as the “literally” example. I truly cannot think of a situation in which the “literally” intensifier adds meaning, and contrary to some, plenty of instances in which it does cause confusion.
Especially for instance in the sentence “my job is literally eye-glazingly boring”. Does that mean that:
A) A frosted coating is appearing over my eyes when I sit at my desk?
B) When I sit at my desk, my eyes glaze over in the sense that I have trouble focusing on reading due to boredom?
C) I’m just as bored at my job as people who are so bored they have trouble focusing their eyes?
Of course, A) is ludicrous. But the use of “literally” as a possible intensive means that sentence could mean either B) or C). And there’s no reason we can’t opine that this particular evolution of language impedes rather than improves communication.