On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 9:52 PM Ada Wan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just a quick reply before the weekend to some of the points that I thought > deserve a short clarification: > > 1. re linguistic empowerment: yes and no. As I commented on X (formerly > Twitter) on 09Aug2023: "[t]here are divergent ways of thinking... but when > it comes to language and the social sciences, one must be careful with how > one "diverges"! Humans and [sic: are] humans. And much of what we postulate > re "in-group/out-group" can be a matter of our "traditions" (if so, is it > time to re-evaluate?), perspectives (if so, can we be biased sometimes?), > or our willingness to include or will to exclude. How different can > particular "languages" (in a folk psychological, proverbial usage) be, > really? Where do the differences lie?". > Of course. That goes without saying. For almost 40 years now I have been looking at this issue and thinking about it. I had wanted to write a book about it. This is what got me into languages and then NLP, because I was then hooked by the study of language by itself, even without the issue of linguistic empowerment, particularly from the computational point of view. I have looked at it from all possible points of view. I was not a linguistic purist even when I began -- with a lot of bitterness -- and I am certainly not that now. I have no doubt at all that there is something universal and species-specific about human languages, although I don't know in what way it is universal exactly. No one does, as far as I know. No one could be more against linguistic chauvinism of any kind than me. Or any other kind of chauvinism. > The same goes with "diversity" efforts. AND OF COURSE I am NOT AGAINST > these. > I believe that. I didn't say you were. I just gave an example to make my point. > But one has to be careful how far one goes with "difference(s)". > Only as far as is reasonable and fair to everyone. > 2. Re "John loves Mary" being "same/different" as "Mary loves John": it > depends. Note stress/emphasis/topicalization, different usage pattern(s) > etc., not just "subj verb obj". > Well, yes, that is the central contradiction of Linguistics. It is primarily supposed to be about spoken language, but -- quite naturally -- linguists in academic literature have to use examples in written form. And the written form misses "stress/emphasis/topicalization, different usage pattern(s) etc.". Being concerned with language for 40 years, how could I possibly not know it? However, I am unable to imagine a scenario where "John loves Mary" could be the same "Mary loves John", with any possible stress/emphasis/topicalization, different usage pattern(s) etc. for either of them and their combinations. It may be that I am missing something here. > 3. Btw, your usage of the term "word" can be replaced by other alternative > formulations, e.g. "term", > Let us terminate this terminological tussle about the term 'term', that is to say, the term 'word'. I have already more than once agreed that the term 'word' is ill-defined and that I have even written about it. In this case, you are indulging in what can be called shadow boxing. > 4. Re phonetics and phonology: I was not referring to the relevance of > phonetic/phonological knowledge per se, that a practitioner in the space of > "language and computing" would "need" in order to be competent. But that, > as well as a comprehensive knowledge of general language theories and a > broad background in p-languages and their (social/usage) contexts, belongs > in the toolkit of a good linguist (as in, a good language scientist). To > me, progressing to finer granularities is just refining our assumptions, > our model. > I mostly agree. Only mostly, since the statement above a somewhat vague programmatic statement. If the details were there, I could agree to specific things. > But to those who may not have had phonetics/phonology, they may be more > likely to think that they "need" "words" and hence my findings might be > either a paradigm shift or the end of the world. > So, you are still equating "having had phonetics/phonology", which can be translated as having formally attended and passed courses and exams in phonetics/phonology. I can't imagine how could you possibly talk about de-pedatization if you subscribe to this -- in my opinion -- somewhat ridiculous way of thinking. Pardon me for using strong words, but what you say is on the borderline of being offensive, if not actually offensive. And it is extremely silly and childish, coming from such a well-read person. > 5. Re triple quotes: """ > I copied and pasted your reply that didn't seem to have been sent to the > list and put it in triple quotes, as a reference (for others). > OK. > 6. Re "Do you have any idea how much hundreds of millions of Indians > suffer simply from being forced to use English?": in what ways are they > "forced"? > I can't even begin to attempt to describe in innumerable ways people are forced to use English. There is tons of literature about that, but a lot of it may be non-European languages. For example, it is there in Hindi. The book that I always wanted to write, but for various reasons couldn't, at least so far, was partly about that. Just to mention a few examples. The medium of instruction in India, particularly for higher education, and exclusively for technical and scientific education, is in English. Every day hundreds of millions of people suffer due to that. The result is that a lot of people grow up with complexes and stunted intellect, as they couldn't understand what the teacher is saying, what is written in the books, and so on. When they come to college, a majority of people have problems writing one decent page of content in either their own language(s) or English. The legal system, particularly at higher levels, works in English. As a result, the overwhelming majority of people have no idea what is going on. They have to rely on others completely, some of whom themselves may not be very fluent in English. All the lucrative jobs require not only knowledge of English, but spoken fluency in English. Not only that, your accent while speaking English puts you in a particular caste, so to speak. As a result, an incompetent and badly educated person who speaks fluent English can get through life much more easily than a competent well-educated person with a 'bad' English accent. There is little incentive to write (and read) in Indian languages, and therefore it is very difficult to write and publish literary or academic or even other kinds of books in Indian languages. And so on and on and on. The challenge is that it is very difficult to solve this problem, since there are many major languages in India, and so speakers of one language will not accept 'imposition' of another Indian language, or even the requirement to learn another Indian language. As a result, just as the British ruled by Divide-and-Conquer, so English rules in this time tested way. And to top it all, if you want to be associated with the global economics/culture/world-at-large, you again need English. > But I can understand that. > I don't think you do at all, based on your comments. > The more important thing is to also understand that no one has to > discriminate based on language(s), > Sure! Who can disagree with that except a language chauvinist? > no one has to adopt a purist attitude when it comes to using/understanding > of language by others. > Perfectly true. Did I even hint at that to the least degree? You are again shadow boxing. > People can always have various language/linguistic habits, no one has to > use "one language only". > Again, did I even hint at that in any possible way? > The point is not to use language as a weapon. > Ditto as above. > [These are things I think you know, but many on this list may not.] > I sure do. I have been thinking and researching about these matters for the last 40 years, almost obsessively, from all possible points of view. My position on this issue has changed a great deal over the years. But even when I started, I was not a purist in any sense of the word. I will always be against forcing people to do things they don't want to do. > Re "Do you know that there are and have been schools in the world, > including India, where students are punished if they are caught speaking in > their mother tongue (or first, "native" language)": is this still happening > in India? I've only had similar experiences in my "foreign language" > lessons and in real life (using a variety/style y when/where y can be > "frowned upon") --- though not "punished", just looked upon > with 🙄 or 👀 in ways condescending. > > The last time I checked, it was happening. As of this moment, I don't know for sure. But, as pointed out above, innumerable people do suffer in innumerable ways due to the supremacy of English in India. I may have some suggestions, but I don't really know the solution to this issue, as it is complicated by so many factors. I will never ever support forcing people to use one or the other language. Why do you make assumptions as you comment on anything and hurl semi-insults? You don't really know me. I didn't assume anything about you. For example, if I have understood correctly, you simply wanted to say that one should pay attention to stress/emphasis/topicalization (I will add, from my side, prosody and intonation) when considering the meanings of the sentences "John loves Mary" and "Mary loves John" (note that there is no question mark here at the end). And you went about it by first saying "let me guess" and then making some silly statements about my competence and expertise about language(s). You could have simply mentioned the importance of stress/emphasis/topicalization in the beginning. I can't imagine any reason why you have to make such assumptions. Well-read and well-educated as you are about language(s), perhaps it is possible, even if only remotely, that I could have a thing or two that I could tell you about language that you might not perhaps know? > Great weekend! > >
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