Gurdur

This thread is in honour of Soyin Milka and Hugo Holbling

Language, like any other human activity, is subject to politics.
As a result, there are often claims that one language is "better" than another one; or that we all should speak only one language; or that languages evolve like biological creatures, and are subject to some form of Social Darwinism.

I'll be tackling all these claims and others in turn, plus I'll be looking at the questions and practices of saving languages from extinction, and a few other issues as well. In order to keep post length manageable, I'll limit each post of mine, and just trundle along over time.
Language is a murky concept with fluid boundaries, but I'll adopt the semi-official definition that if one dialect is less than 60 % mutually intelligible with another dialect, then they are two seperate languages.

First off, let's examine the question:
Q 1) Is any language "better" for humans in the biological sense ?

By "biological sense", I mean is any particular human language more suited than others for the human brain ?
This is the easiest question to answer (guess why I did it first );
a very simple scientific test is to see if there are differences in the severity of aphasia in cases of strokes with similar comparable damage.
Aphasia is the disturbance of language owing to malfunctioning of the language-processing areas in the brain; very typically, a particular artery and its sub-arterioles in the human brain is very probe to strokes (blocking up) than other brain arteries (owing to its tortuous course around the brain, but that's another story).
Aphasia has long been noted in human history, though it was not until the 19th century it was recognised for what is was.
The ancient Egyptians made a few notes on aphasia and the brain, thousands of years ago; and there is a very famous refrence to a very typical stroke pattern, in the Old Testament.
A hint: the area for production of language in the brain (Broca's area), is quite small (smaller than a USA dollar coin) and lies right next to the small area which is responsible for control of the right hand ---- so a very typical stroke is one where the person can understand language, but has problems producing it, and also cannot control the right hand (it stays limp), but can control the right arm. Given that huge hint, you, dear reader, should be able to work out the very famous saying in the OT that is such a good description of a stroke --- while it is based on a failure tp recognise a stroke for what it is.
Goethe, in one of his novels, also provided amextremely good description of an aphasiac.

Given all that, do we in fact see any differences in the extent of aphasia among different language groups ?
Especially interesting is the question if you are already horrified by Finnish with its 15 or 16 cases (depending how you count), or by French with its idiosyncatic tonal laws, or by the Germanic languages with their atypical umlauting processes (mouse/mice, foot/feet), or by the Semitic languages with their very idiosyncratic morphophonological processes (ktb, kuttab, uktab etc.).

But the answer to the question of differences in aphasia is:
No, none at all.
Whether Inuit, English, American Sign Language (for deaf people), or Chukchi, there is no such observable differential.
The differentials that are noticed are between children and adults (children typically recover better and faster), and between women and men (women suffer slightly less aphasia than men, often, by strokes of similar magnitude, but the difference is small).

A 1) Therefore no human language is "better" biologically than any other.

I shall do another couple of posts soon, first dealing with the learning of language, and then after that, having disposed of the biological aspects, I'll deal with the sociopolitical issues.

John Hancock

You win Gurdur "Ah has spoken".... Mammie Yokum

Jat

It is all just semantics anyways and you can't really argue that.

Soyin Milka

Sometimes I wonder if Gurdur is not simply trying to impress the ladies by being a cunning linguist. Sorry about the bad pun, it's probably not new to you, but to me it was and it was just irresistible

But I'm looking forward to part two! I wonder if that topic would not have been better served in the "Science and skepticism" forum tho. Maybe the other linguists hide there...

Soyin

Gurdur

No.
If I wanted to impress the ladies, I wouldn't do it with a bloody excursion on linguistics. I refuse to comment here on the vas deferens between men and women.
Coming very soon.
No.
I can predict exactly what would happen there; first off, it would get bogged down in a rehash of the argument over whether language is innate or merely a cultural construct, then it would finally be sent off to PD once I really got stuck into the sociopolitical aspects. Copernicus often posts in this forum; ksagnostic rarely bothers posting at all.
I believe liserea may have studied linguistics.
All in all, it's appropriate to this forum --- or will quickly become so.
And the more pronouncements I make on linguistics, the more I expect sudden flak from my more professional colleagues.

Blixy Sticks

Ahhh....the Universal Language of Love.

By the way, great double entendre!!

Gurdur

I suppose this thread now gets dedicated to Luiseach and Optional too.

I want to do a couple of points first before moving onto the question of inherent bias in language, which I might tackle in a seperate thread.
______

Q 2) Is any language "easier to learn" for humans in the biological or social sense ?

There is no evidence for that at all in children; human children show no particular learning bias effects with different languages.

There is some slight evidence for differential effects upon language in stroke damage in adults; however, none enough to be significant.

There is significant differences in writing systems; but these are a seperate question, and not inherent to original language itself.
For example, children who are routinely familiar with the Chinese and Japanese ideographic systems display better memory retention for long digit/symbol chains than do Western children.
However, that has nothing to do with the language itself, but how it is transcribed into writing systems.
The question of what constitues a better writing system is not a question I will tackle here
(staying rigorously on-topic).

A 2) Therefore no human language is easier to learn for children than any other language.

phaedrus

How about........

DOES ONE REQUIRE LANGUAGE TO 'THINK'?

IS THERE A NATURAL LANGUAGE?

DOES SAUSSURE'S NOTION OF SYNTAGMA HELP?

Last but not the least....why "politics of language" ?

jp

Celsus

Could you elaborate? I'll be away for a few days but I'd like to see what your position is. Surely you're not saying that languages don't evolve? I would consider linguistic evolution to be Lamarckian, not Darwinian.

Joel

Gurdur

Give me a break .....
Next one up is "Is language inherently politically biased ?"

I estimate there'lll be enough fun for all with that one.
uh ?
Since when are existing human languages unnatural ?

Or what do you mean ?

It's good to see you back, Phaedrus, and to see you joining in.
I hope to satsify, just give me time.

Because I got fed up with one poster in this forum making completely wrong statements about language and the politics of sociolinguistics.

The poster in question (Jat) kept on blathering about how one language was "better" than another, and kept on making Social Darwinist arguments about languages dying because somehow they magically weren't "fit" enough.