Subject: Yellow Card to Jordan, And, and Craig

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 01:52:17 +1100

Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 18:31:17 -0600
From: Jordan DeLong <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Aesthetics

And's response to this was a lot nicer. :-)

> On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 12:06:28AM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
>> Jordan:
>>> On Sat, Dec 07, 2002 at 03:28:24PM -0500, Craig wrote:
>>>> Because there is a greater phonic contrast between [T] and [f] or 
>>>> [s] than
>>>> between [h] and [x]
>>>
>>> I disagree. To me, [s] sounds almost like [T]. But [x] and [h]
>>> sound *totally* different
>>> This line of reasoning is bogus anyway though; languages can divide
>>> their sounds however they want
>> Languages don't divide their sounds however they want. Or, if they
>> do, then they all want to do it in similar ways. Accordingly, we
>> can look at natural languages to see which sorts of contrast are
>> easy and which are hard. [T] is very uncommon (contrasting with
>> [s] and/or [t]). Contrast between [h] and [x] is even more uncommon.
> The reason most languages "want to do it in similar ways" is due
> to two obvious things: (a) common history/cultural 
> diffusion/whathaveyou,
> and (b) the range of possible speech-sounds humans make.

Dude, sorry, but And knows what he's talking about, and when you're 
talking linguistics, the PhD does count for something. The fact that 
statistically languages do exhibit strong tendencies to make certain 
distinctions more readily than others is not only attributable to 
genetic or areal relation; it does appear to be a system optimisation 
effect, not just a physiological constraint. And yes, Khoisan is 
drastically different; it's also a one-off, being confined to one small 
part of the world (unless you're making up a language from scratch, as 
happened with Lardil.)

> But
> what I'm *actually* talking about (I gather you weren't really
> reading) is that different languages distinguish on things others
> don't. For example in english the automatic aspiration of "p" at
> the beginning of words is not considered a different sound than
> normal "p", but to a mandarin speaker (ti'e) aspiration of "p"
> sounds quite different than the normal "p" sound.

True. We have two different questions though:

A) is the proposed contrast possible;
B) is the proposed contrast a good idea.

That A is true, you state in the style you are wonted to.

> I can tell whether [s] and [T] sound alike, and whether [x] and [h]
> sound alike *to me*. If you don't accept that, you can piss off.

(I would add that there are linguists who quantify this kind of 
difference for a living. I'm drinking with some in a pub tomorrow, and 
I'm happy to report back on how they'd tackle this.)

Now, how frequently languages do contrast between /x/ and /h/ is a data 
point for question B. Arguably the time for question B is past, 
because the phonetics is baselined. The practical outcome is that there 
will be a lot of [C] and compensatory scrapiness (and I think a lot of 
voiced [h<?>]), to emphasise a distinction between /h/ and /x/ that 
isn't all that robust. It ain't robust presumably (though I'd have to 
see the relative stats to be sure); but it is canonical, and I think 
we've gotten by with it. Some will go off and do [T]s and [L]s instead 
for '. But until they do so at a Logfest and can hold a conversation 
with their interlocutor keeping a straight face, I won't take them 
seriously.

Craig, you're making your pilgrimage to Logfest soon, aren't you? :-)

And just to do equal time:

Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 22:07:40 -0000
From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [h] (was: RE: Re: Aesthetics

> In a sense, it is desirable to use [T] for precisely this reason: if
> [T] is allowed by the baseline/design but proscribed by convention,
> then we we end up with convention that contravenes the baseline by
> prescribing a range of usage narrower than what the baseline permits.
> We can generalize this futher to such things as use of the buffer
> vowel, use of non-'SVO' bridi, and so forth. That is, nonnormative
> usage is to be encouraged, so that in these early days of usage we
> don't set in stone conventions narrower than the baseline.

As usual, someone else has answered better by the time I get to it (in 
this case Adam). But:

And, that's contrarianism, and that's not what languages do. Languages 
stay cohesive, particularly in language communities as small as ours. 
When they do have everyone do their own thing, you get schism --- which 
we call language split.

Do stuff in lojban just to be different from every other lojbanist? I 
don't regard that as style, but as fetishising difference, which I 
object to just as I've objected to xod's privileging of SW oddity. 
(There, now I've offended everyone. :-) The point of language is to be 
communicative, and to sustain a community. When the villagers in Papua 
New Guinea decide to pronounce their k's as p's just to be different 
from the next village, the entire village does it. (Craig thinks 
Adam's dictum that "you don't have a reason to do this" is unnecessary 
and divisive. I think Craig is being divisive because he's done a 
Thinkit on this theta, and right now he looks to me like a community of 
one --- but hey, let's see how he goes at Logfest...)

I encourage the development of community norms, because that's what I 
ultimately think language needs to be about (however cool it might be 
to also get some logic in there.) In fact, the question of where the 
hell these community norms come from in artificial languages is what 
got me into linguistics in the first place...

(Not that the answer turns out to be that surprising. You can see that 
process at work clearly in both Klingon and Lojban --- Klingon more, I 
think, since there's overall less to debate. It's a lot murkier in 
Esperanto, because it was already so close to European languages, and 
there's a whole lot of German beneath its surface.)

And the heavens won't burst if people constrain lojban further than 
does the baseline. That means people are trying to tell us something. 
Besides, language is still a social phenomenon; I don't see how you'll 
stop such normalisation by being contrary. We've seen what such 
contrariness has reaped in the past. :-)

--
Edarh oni oroumene NICK NICHOLAS PhD, French/Italian,
kouraste na mpa"inei, University of Melbourne, Australia
apo ton kosmo entenh [email-masked]
tsi naxei na orinei? http://www.opoudjis.net
--- Dhmhtzh Xouph, _O gerou-Kwstagkh_ (Tsakwniko poihma)