From conlang@diku.dk Wed Dec 14 18:27:50 1994 Received: from odin.diku.dk by nfs2.digex.net with SMTP id AA05831 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Wed, 14 Dec 1994 18:27:35 -0500 Received: from (localhost) by odin.diku.dk with SMTP id AA26957 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4 for ); Thu, 15 Dec 1994 00:27:26 +0100 Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 00:27:26 +0100 Message-Id: <9412142231.AA19142@medici.trl.OZ.AU> Comment: Issues related to constructed languages Originator: conlang@diku.dk Errors-To: thorinn@diku.dk Reply-To: conlang@diku.dk Sender: conlang@diku.dk Version: 5.5 -- Copyright (c) 1991/92, Anastasios Kotsikonas From: j.guy@trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) To: lojbab@access.digex.net Subject: Complexity in language Status: RO Acting under duress (John Cowan urges me to repost this here), I repeat here what I posted not very long ago on sci.lang about the old saw, found in the FAQ, that all languages are equally complex. -----------------Start of quote--------------------------- From: jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) Date: 1 Dec 1994 16:28:12 +1100 Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: sci.lang FAQ This is a good FAQ, all in all. Mind you, since I don't work in a university, what irks Jon Aarbakke (who does) so much irks me little because GB and all that is so many light years away from me that it has me utterly unaffected. However, there's this business about languages being equally complex. Now really, folks, this is completely, but completely, wrong. So I took my keyboard, turned it seven times in my inkwell, and came up with this: It is far from true that all languages are equally complex. I suppose that this strange notion is a throwback, or an offspring, whichever you prefer, of "politically correct" whereby all languages are equal, complexity is good, so all languages are equally complex. Now, if you have tried to learn French, and then Spanish, you might have noticed just a tad of a difference. Spanish has nowhere as many impossibly difficult vowels as French, nowhere as many abominably irregular verbs, nowhere as crazy a spelling... But let's not get personal, so allow me to take as an example two languages which will not make anyone raise an eyebrow, I am sure. One is called Tolomako, the other Sakao. Both are spoken in the same village, called Port-Olry, a place on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu. Both languages are closely related, by which I mean that they might have been one and the same perhaps 1000 years ago, probably much less. Noblesse oblige, phonology first. Tolomako vowels: a, e, i, o, u consonants: p, t, k, B (), G (), m, n, s, ts, r, l syllable structure is (C)V(V) Sakao vowels: a (front unrounded) a^ (back rounded) E () e i O (IPA mirror image of "c") o u oe (i.e. IPA o-with-e as "oe" in French "oeil") o/ (i.e. IPA o-slash, "eu" as in French "peu") y (i.e. French "u") (i) (an always unstressed high vowel, unmarked for rounding or backing, as elusive as the infamous French so-called "mute e") diphthongs: oeE a^O consonants: p, t, k, m, n, ng, B(), D (), G (), h, s, r, R (unvoiced trill), l semiconsonants: j, w syllable structure (that is, if "syllable" makes any sense in that language, and I suspect it does not): a single vowel, or diphthong, surrounded by any number of consonants. Example: i "thou" mhErtpr "having sung and stopped singing thou kept silent" (m- 2nd pers. hErt "to sing" -p perfective, -r continuous) Oh, I forgot: consonants are long or short, e.g. oeBe "drum", oeBBe "bed". A bit of grammar now. Obligatorily possessed nouns for instance: Tolomako Sakao na tsiGoku oes(i)ngoeG my mouth na tsiGomu oes(i)ngoem thy mouth na tsiGona Os(i)ngOn his/her/its mouth na tsiGo... oesoeng... mouth of... na Buluku ulyG my hair na Bulumu ulym thy hair na Buluna uloen his/her/its hair na Bulu... no/l... hair of... A tad of verbal phrases now. Sakao has some holophrastic tendencies there, Tolomako none. A simple example, to serve to illustrate how that may have developed: Tolomako mo losi na poe ne na matsa 3rd pers. hit art. pig prep. art. club he hits/kills the/a pig with a club (a praiseworthy occupation, leading to rising in society) Notice that I said "prep.". Tolomako has only one preposition to make do for locative (ubi, quo, unde, qua), whether in space and time, and for the instrumental. Here it's the instrumental. Sakao m(i)- jil -(i)n a- ra a- mas 3rd pers. hit +transitive art. pig art. club Same meaning, same highly regarded sign of social achievement. What I called +transitive is a suffix that turns an intransive verb into a transitive one, and a transitive verb into a ditransitive one. Ditransitive? I made it up. That's a verb that takes two direct objects, one of them expressing, loosely speaking, the instrumental. When a verb takes two objects they can occur in any order. Only the meaning can disambiguate. Thus: m(i)jil(i)n ara amas m(i)jil(i)n amas ara mean the same. Now for a nice example of Sakao's holophrastic tendencies: mOssOnEshOBr(i)n aDa EDE he-shoots-fish-follows-continuous aspect+transitive bow sea he kept on walking along the shore shooting fish with a bow You can say mOssOnEshObr(i)n EDE aDa equally well, of course. Broken down into its bits and pieces: mO- 3rd pers. sOn to shoot with a bow, but because here it takes an incorporated object, its initial consonant is long: ssOn nEs fish. Note the morphophonology: ssOn+nEs > ssOnEs hoB to follow -r continuous aspect -(i)n +transitive a- article Da bow, instrumental E- article DE sea, direct object. Of what? of hOB "to follow" of course! Which of the two languages spoken in Port-Olry do you think the Catholic missionaries learnt and used? Could that possibly be because it was easier than the other? Are all languages, then, equally easy, or difficult? --------------------end of quote--------------------------- I cannot resist the perverse pleasure of adding a few things. If you have had a close look at the Sakao examples, you might suspect that things like m(i)jilrap(i) amas, namely: m(i)- jil -ra -p -(i)n a- mas 3rd kill pig perf. +trans art. club are quite kosher. And you'd be right! And further, if you have happened to lurk on sci.lang and read the FAQ, you may remember that all languages are equally complex, with the possible exception of pidgins and creoles. Nonsense again. I have a practical method of creole ("Le Guadeloupeen Sans Peine", or is it Martiniquais?) and I assure you that it is far, far more complex than Tolomako! Finally, someone countered on sci.lang that I was confusing "complicated" and "complex". That not all languages were equally "complicated" but all were equally "complex", complexity referring to their expressive capacity. Stuff and nonsense again. I can express *anybloodything* in Bislama, the pidgin of Vanuatu, given the time to explain what I mean, give examples, build up a specialized vocabulary, etc. Why, even "fire the photon torpedoes!" It still is a lot easier to say in Klingon, isn't it? So this definition of "complexity" is not only contrary to usage, amounting in reality to "expressiveness" or "functionality", but is even false once granted.