tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post4008220157199907801..comments2024-03-28T13:40:26.497+00:00Comments on M-Phi: English = German?Jeffrey Ketlandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753975411670884721noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-64597045552833954002013-03-27T17:33:31.519+00:002013-03-27T17:33:31.519+00:00Sara,
Yes, thanks for that example - I wanted som...Sara,<br /><br />Yes, thanks for that example - I wanted something a bit more vivid though (my original example involved it happening over 1 year!). But maybe I should have stuck with that!<br /><br />One might think of this as a sorites, yes, concerning natural language names, such as "English", "German", "Punjabi" etc. We group together what are, strictly speaking, distinct languages, when certain speech community conditions are met. There is then a speech community, all speaking distinct languages, but communication is sufficiently fluent to count, as some approximation, all as speaking the "same" language. <br /><br />JeffJeffrey Ketlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01753975411670884721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-29892195120842870732013-03-27T16:32:21.626+00:002013-03-27T16:32:21.626+00:00It seems to me that no thought experiment is neede...It seems to me that no thought experiment is needed; simply consider Old English, which has continuously evolved into Modern English, but is manifestly not identical to it (if one believes that a necessary condition of language identity is that speakers of one language can read/understand, even if not speak, the other language without special schooling).<br /><br />The case of language change is a sorites -- a single small change does not make a language different, but enough small changes does.Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/en/people/academic-staff/details/persdetail/uckelmann.htmlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-59738899417285275522013-03-27T15:34:02.507+00:002013-03-27T15:34:02.507+00:00Kai,
Thanks - yes, I mention Chomsky's point ...Kai,<br /><br />Thanks - yes, I mention Chomsky's point about I-languages in the talk I sometimes give on this topic, saying things similar to what you say too. For Chomsky, though, I-languages are mental, whereas I'd prefer to say they're abstract entities (Lewis 75 or Katz 81) that our mental states are related to, by "cognizing".<br /><br />If we adopt the fine-grained language individuation condition for languages in the technical sense, we can try and build-in similarities, overlaps, extensions, mutual interpretability, etc., later.<br /><br />JeffJeffrey Ketlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01753975411670884721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4987609114415205593.post-90505860667486732772013-03-27T13:50:30.883+00:002013-03-27T13:50:30.883+00:00This is somewhat common place in theoretical lingu...This is somewhat common place in theoretical linguistics, where many assume that the only reasonable target of for certain kinds of analysis is the "I-language" of one speaker at a time. (Since most speakers speak differently at different times, in different contexts, we're all massively multilingual, even if we only seem to speak "one" language.) <br /><br />But then there are vaguer criteria such as mutual comprehensibility, itself a graded notion, which would identify larger sets of I-languages as being "the same".<br /><br />It seems reasonable to me that the identity conditions are vague and context-dependent, varying with the purpose of an analysis. I speak roughly the same language as my mother, which is why we can communicate reasonably successfully. But my language today is different from my language yesterday, because I got reacquainted with the word "cognize", which I had blissfully forgotten.Kai von Fintelhttp://kaivonfintel.orgnoreply@blogger.com