Return-Path: Message-Id: <9109041445.AA18950@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Wed Sep 4 13:07:31 1991 Reply-To: Lojban list Sender: Lojban list From: "61510::GILSON" Subject: What is a language? X-To: lojban To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann , Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Sep 4 13:07:31 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN For those of you on both the lojban list and the conlang list, I apologize for the fact that you will get one of these via each pathway. I think that this is relevant to both groups, even if more to conlang than to lojban-list, so I am sending it to both groups; since I know that there is a lot of overlap but not 100%, this seems to be necessary. The question comes up as to what is a "real language": Is Esperanto, or lojban, or Cornish? I feel that nothing is gained by unduly restricting the list of "real languages." A language with only one speaker is still a language, if he/she uses it (say, in a diary, which enables him to communicate with him/herself at a later time). Certainly Intal, say, qualifies as a language, since Erich Weferling wrote the Intal grammar in Intal, and Ivan Derzhansky and I read it in Intal, and not in the German that certainly was Weferling's thought medium. I think that we should certainly accept as a language anything other than a direct letter-for-letter or word-for-word coding of another language. Morse-coded English is not a different language from English, because it is isomorphic to written English. American Sign Language is certainly a language; it is NOT isomorphic to written English. Intal may follow German in distinguishing two meanings of English "know" but it is not coded German; it has a well-defined word order different from German. We might rather more profitably accept as a language anything with any pretension to being one, and use qualifiers to distinguish such as: a living language = any language with at least one speaker; an active communications language = any language with at least two speakers, who use it as a means of communication; a primary language = any language that has at least one speaker who habitually thinks in it; a first language = any language which is the initial exposure to language of any individual. I do not claim that these are all the possibilities. We might want to distinguish Lojban (which has a few speakers, but none fluent, if I understand Bob LeChevalier's level of ability properly) from Esperanto (which by now does have some fluent speakers), for example.