I’m speechless. You do know that semantics is a branch of linguistics and that Noam Chomsky is a friggin’ linguist, right?
Damn ** pravnik**, I’m thoughtless. Do you read the same language that I write? Do you really think that I think that Noam Chomsky is a only a friggin’ Communist?
Well for your information I think that Norm Chomsky is a better * friggin’* Communist that he is a friggin’ semanticist.
And Noam, bless his crooked heart, is not that good of a friggin’ communist.
Stick with the subject, Milum, you know full well that I didn’t say anything about Chomsky’s politics, good or bad. The discussion is not whether Chomsky is a Communist, but whether he is a linguist. The subject is linguistics.
You stated that linguistics is not concerned with the understanding of language. You explained that linguistics in necessarily concerned with “structure”, or syntax, and not “understanding”, or semantics. This is demonstrably false; lingusitics is equally concerned with lexicology, lexicography, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as interrelated and overlapping aspects of language as a whole.
As an alternative to linguistics and linguists, you presented Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is about as much an alternative to linguistics and linguists as Issac Newton is an alternative to physics and physicists. Chomsky is Institute Professor of the Department of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and ironically the author of Syntactic Structures, perhaps the major work of the twentieth century on syntax and its relation to semantics. The assertion that Chomsky somehow represents an alternative to supposedly syntax-obsessed modern linguists is absurd.
raison d’etre, dear Milum
Which just proves a point, but I’m not sure which one.
(Perhaps that those people that have groen up speaking the world’s most invasive language don’t easily learn another one. Or maybe that you shouldn’t use foreign words if you are not sure about them?)
By the way, I keep arguing that there IS NO english language, just a hotch-potch.
And english has got such a large vocabulary because it often has at least two words meaning exactly the same, the different words don’t mean different things, but indicate the social status of the speaker.
Um, Mister Flycow. Hodge podges are languages too. Just witness the americanization of “raison d’etre” as an example.
And as for the English language conveying status; all languages beyond grunts convey status. Better put, all languages have words devised to include the ingroup and exclude the outgroup; the English language is just better at it.
Now doggonit ** parvnik**, I didn’t breach the opening topic by bringing up Noam Chomsky. I just used him by way of his writings as an example of the ridiculous state that is found in the study of Semantics today. Have you ever read any of this guy’s stuff? If I were vulgar, which I’m not, I would even say " it sucks".
Do you have an actual example of an error? Or are you going to resort to more of the same Right-wing equivalent of psycho-babble with which you have flooded this discussion?
Error? You say “error”? The whole of Chomsky’s theory is error. Don’t you of the left ever read your heros?
But please forgive me my right wing psycho-babble; just explain to me what fundamental precoded social messages are encoded throught the synapse routes of my brain?
Chomsky is a bigger fraud than Freud, but has a less respectable following.
Don’t bitch! This is your tangent.
Tom, you should know by now if you have read the entire thread that Milum’s explanatory examples consist of carts and donkeys, howler monkeys, mirrors, ant armies, bees, football players, France (that fickle bitch), Laz-e-boy recliners, hammers, and vacuum cleaners (and their salesmen). There is, apparently, no need to use an example from a real langauge when metaphors and allegories illustrate the point for all to see.
Once again, there is no LINGUISTIC data that supports the notion of language superiority (in the sense of “better”). If your arguement is that “Linguistics has nothing to do with the understanding of language” then you need to start another thread where people can post about which language is the most beautiful, pure, lyrical, poetic, easiest to learn, etc. These are not questions which are answered by linguists or by linguistic data.
Yes, I concur. I think I learned this in grad school - it was part of my secret indoctrination to the School of Logic.
Hmmm. Perhaps. If your determinate is that “languages which are spoken by dominate cultures are better” then I suppose, in some sick way, that your statement is correct. However, if your determinate is based on actual data then your conclusion falls apart. You can only get a value judgement as a result if you avoid using actual language examples. If you disagree, please use the following fomula with your examples in the place of X, Y, and Z where X and Y are real languages and Z is data.
Language X is better than Language Y because Z.
Stunning conclusion. You got me. I have to agree with this statement as well.
BTW, neither Eco or Chomsky are known for their work in semantics. Eco studies semiotics (which can encompass semantics) and Chomsky is primarily a syntactician although he has published in just about every field. In any case, you misspelled “it sucks.” It is spelled “it’s complicated.”
Why would I bitch? Watching you spew more content-free vituperation is almost worth having you interrupt the serious discussions on which you inflict yourself on this MB.
So, what you are saying is that you were not able to understand anything Chomsky said, and once you learned of his odd political philosophies, the mere mention of his name makes you more incoherent.
Thanks. That’s the information I sought.
May I just note that there are two people on this message board with such patience that Job would envy them. Those two are Polycarp and tomndebb.
Corollary to that, if one manages to frustrate them enough to make either one post something snippy at one, it more or less proves that one is an incredibly dense dunderhead.
Note, please, that Milum has finally managed to make tom snippy. This proves the popular opinion concerning Milum. Quod erat demonstrando…
Milum to himself: Drat! They caught me trolling. Oh well, if the Authorities get involved I’ll just explain to them that I was merely casting, hoping against hope that I could snag a dope who was of a mindset to discuss language without ego or bile.
Hmm. Come to think of it I did get a few bites. Maybe I’ll try again. Besides, it’ll give me a chance to expand on my most profound remarks.
** All languages are different otherwise they would be the same.**
My lovely fish would extrapolate…* No two entities in the universe are the same.*
** If all languages are different then they all can be rated from best to worse by any measure that we choose to use as a determinate.**
“Quite!” My fish says,* “Since all groupings of things are necessarily arbitrary, then language at its core is flawed, and so is the logic which follows, such as this conclusion.”*
So all languages are not the same.
The fish then smiles and says… "Of course they aren’t , Silly, the egalitarian idea that all languges are equally complicated and equally evolved came from a feel-good moment of a hop-headed linguist back during the sixties, and this happy thought quickly became the mantra of a social clique masquerading as a science.
Thank you, Fish, I enjoyed our conversation.
You know, the fact that people have trouble comprehending your moderately incoherent posts does not mean that you’re more intelligent than them. It just means that you can’t explain an idea worth shit.
False premise. All colors are different. Do you truly believe that colors can be rated best to worst? All musical notes are different. Do you truly believe that notes can be rated best to worst? (And if we can rate them based on “any measure we choose,” then you are attempting an IMHO discussion in which evceryone simply picks any criterion that suits their own purpose and holds to it based on their preconceived notions. Poster A picks red, Spanish, and E above middle C because of a fond memory from college; Poster B picks green, Greek, and A below high C because they simply “feel right.” There is no genuine discussion, because everyone comes to the table with totally unlike criteria. (Just as your initial postings on this thread attempted to claim that English was “superior” simply because it is spoken by the currently dominant military power in the world–meaning that French was superior 200 years ago and that Mongolian was superior 500 years ago and Arabic was superior 1200 years ago, regardless of the actual nature of the languages, themselves.)
This is not to say that languages could not be rated, but a claim that one can rate then simply because they are different fails.
There would be less ego and bile in your discussions if you stopped bringing them into every thread you entered. (But suit yourself.)
Uh jayjay, you might want to re-write your last sentence to read “…worth (a) shit.” As it is you might confuse casual readers into thinking that it is only the ideas worth shit that I can’t explain.
Do I make myself clear?________
:rolleyes: Not usually.
[color=white]_____________________ Warning!______________
__________ The following is for the eyes of tomndebb only._____
_________If you are not tomndebb please turn the page now .[/color]_____
Now re-read what you wrote. Of course you can rate colors or musical notes. Anything can be rated. The propriety of such rating might be questioned but still you can rate differences. What you can’t rate and still remain congruent is sameness. Now go apologize for the error of your thoughts to the nice members of this board.
Not legitimately in Great Debates–which was the point I made. Anyone can, of course, throw out mere opinions (as you demonstrate).
A question for Milium:
If some languages are linguistically better than others (as you seem to be claiming) then can you give an example of two languages, tell which is superior, and most importantly why?
For example, which is better: French or English? What about French or Spanish?
Ok, ** quelquechose**, I’ll answer your question in detail with focus towards your frame-of-question. But first I must go out on a small adventure. I’ll reply to you tomorrow night.
Be cool.
Unequivocally…
** ----> English is a superior language to the French.**
Mainly because English is more closely integrated into the cogs and grinds of the dynamics of Western Civilization, and Western Civilization is currently a superior super-culture of which language is but a single aspect.
Of course “culture” and “language” and words like “superior” are indefinite concepts with fuzzy outlines that depend greatly upon who is doing the conceptualizing.
During the past 500 years over 500 hundred cultures have waxed and waned in the judgement of those who study cultures. Cultures are simply social machineries that allow groupings of people to continue in time. Unfortunatly cultures are ever-changing, and tend to borrow from and blend into other cultures as well as the annoying trait of spontaneously inventing new cultural traditions on their own. Not only that, but super-cultures like the Mayans of Central America lasted a thousand years or more by way of sharing similar religious beliefs and holding identical cultural traditions while at the same time operating from many different political and religious centers and steadfastly continuing to speak more than 25 different languages. So I guess it is fair to ask…If the French language operates within the confines of the great “Western Super-culture” why is it not as “superior” as English? Well it does me great credit to admit that the reason I think that English is superior to French is because of my chauvinism.
Now don’t get me wrong I think that chauvinism is good. Chauviniam is necessary and healthy and is not immoral or wrong if not extended to the sins of self-love and xeno-hate.
You know, like when you cheer for a college football team. Reason tells you that your team will probably not be the #1 team in the nation, but your sense of loyality rightly transends mundane reason and so, if you have had a drink or two, you might scream out “We’re number one” even if your team’s pitiful record is 0-10.
Besides, French is a meally-mouth language, suitable only for whining and wooing chicks. Not like Italian. The Italian language was given to mankind so that the grunting human voice could be properly set to music. Hell man, the United States of America was the first country in the entire world to allow the world’s greatest operas to be performed in the languages in which they were written. We love foreign languages except those from France.
We here in the States understand that all languages are not the same. And even if they are, some languages are much better at “sameness” than others.