dope?
Is it in the top 100 or 1000 usage at any time in the English or Dutch language? Thot not.
Dutch contribution still = < monumental.
I resent the comments shooting down my use of older sources.
I insist that the Dopers who have done this must give specifics about points I brught up for which they have later sources. I cited Fleisch, but probably not thoroughly enough; in The Art of Plain Talk, it’s the entire Chapter 3, “Listen to Plain Talk.” For an example Fleisch gives a short passage from Milton’s Areopagitica, followed by a hypothetical example of how a modern writer would say the same thing (he comments “No modern reader would stand for Miltonian periods.”)
Without specific examples, indeed, the disagreement loses objectivity and suggests to me that my critics have an ulterior motive–i.e., they want to sell me someone’s books.
I’d love to sell you a book… but I’m not quite published yet … and one fears humorous fiction wouldn’t add greatly to our discussion.
I don’t know Fleisch, I read Mario Pei some 25 years ago. Sorry I can’t be more specific about particulars. I do know that in three universities nearby with linguistics departments (Stanford, UCSC and UCB), Pei’s books don’t appear.
Contrast that with reading academic journals with the latest linguistic work and you’ll see the problem is in part presenting evidence from an academic era 50 years ago. That kind of leap is hard to make. (So, no offense was intended.)
Writing directly to the comment that the Dutch had a special influence on American English because of their owning NYC obscures that the English, French and American Indians were all over the place, and that their influence was likely to be far more pervasive. I suggested their lack of impact could be measured by the unimportance of the words the Dutch contributed to American English. I now present similar evidence in an experiment I ran twice: Open the Webster’s 3rd dictionary to a random page, and see how many entries you come across before reaching one coming from Dutch. I went through whole pages. There are plenty of Latin, Greek, French, and Middle English words, however.
What Pei was doing – presumably – was presenting an annecdotal example of the many and peculiar ways language is shaped. And New York City is a perfectly interesting example. But we can’t go from there to saying, as was stated way back in the thread, that Dutch had a considerable influence on English before Chaucer. It was a language called Anglo-Frisian, not Dutch. Maybe in someone’s mind “Anglo-Frisian” and “Dutch” are synonomous because both were spoke in the same area? That would certainly explain the comment…
I think I owe other posters here an apology of sorts.
I had keyed in most of a posting when I apparently hit the wrong key–and my message was lost. This usually makes me want to chew nails, or scream; and I apparently tinted ther posting I did make with this irritation. While I am in fact annoyed by the way others comment about my sources. I think I went overboard with “ulterior motives.”
Yah, losing a post that way really rubs my fur the wrong way, too. I’ve taken to doing a CTRL A, then CTRL C in the reply box before submitting or previewing, then, if it gets lost, a CTRL V will bring it back (assuming Windows is being used.)
CTRL V, eh? I usually use AOL as my ISP at home, and Internet Explorer when I use a public computer. Ideally I would use IE at home, but Bluelight, the ISP I have for Internet Explorer, seems to have become pathetically impotent of late… :mad:
Or much more likely, maybe in someone’s mind AP English, where he heard something of that sort, was eight years ago, and he’s foggy on the details.
I stand corrected.
If the market for Ph.D.'s in linguistics should ever pick up I’d reconsider finishing the program. I would imagine that anyone with master’s degrees in both math and linguistics would have his/her pick of where to finish the Ph.D. I know at one time, at least, there was significant research being done in the mathematical analysis of language.
Oddly enough I wasn’t very good at math but when I studied Chomsky we had to work out “proofs” of how a given sentence might be generated using the transformational rules given, and I really enjoyed that part.
javaman writes:
> If the market for Ph.D.'s in linguistics should ever pick up I’d
> reconsider finishing the program. I would imagine that anyone
> with master’s degrees in both math and linguistics would have
> his/her pick of where to finish the Ph.D. I know at one time, at
> least, there was significant research being done in the
> mathematical analysis of language.
Well, first, I’m 50 years old. It wouldn’t be particularly easy changing jobs at this point. I’m not sure I’m capable of the concentration it takes to get a Ph.D. anyway. You have to think about just one thing for several years.
There was a lot of research done in the mathematical analysis of language during the period from the late '50’s to the early '70’s, just before I became a grad student. There were also quite a few people going into linguistics with some mathematical background. I wish I could say that they accomplished something significant by applying math to linguistics, but I’m not convinced of it. My discouragement with the state of the field was part of my reason for getting out of linguistics. It would take me a while to explain the battle between generative semantics and interpretive semantics, but for an overview of that weird period of linguistics, see the book The Linguistics Wars by Randy Allen Harris.
I was a professional computer scientist / linguist for a brief period, creating and bringing a product to market. Even though I had a working product, the professional linguists at large were constantly demanding we explain our product in terms of the academic theories they thought most important. A particular professor at Berkeley commented that our (already functioning) program could not work. The AI community, on the other hand, wanted to flog the tools (such as case-based reasoning) that they’d been trying for decades to find a use for.
But as for being able to break out of the academic mold, and apply mathematics (particularly statistics) and linguistics to a useful product . . . I’ve pretty much given up. The academics are interested in endless turf wars, as Wendell may have been suggesting.
Vaguely getting back to the OP . . . It’s recognized that to a degree people have “individual languages” – what I mean by “blue” or “amusing” isn’t the same as someone else. Something that distinguishes Old English from Modern English is the trouble the speakers would have understanding one another. Even Elizabethan English would entail some problems.
So, on the supposition that personal languages may reflect hard-wired perceptions, would it be true that people with similar personal languages could understand one another better, even if born 500 years apart, than they could most of their contemporaries? Are types of personal language to some degree invariant?