The most preposterous proposal ...
Andrew Usher
Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
It is a quite laughable idea, and hard to know where to start in
criticism of it. It is _for practical purposes_ a constructed,
artificial language if it is actually used, as it has no history. That
it is a reconstruction may be linguistically relevant, but I don't see
the practical use of it. The grammatical complexity of it, though, is
relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that it
definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple grammar,
while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular possible.
That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is toward
simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not so in
many other language families.
Now his PIE is supposely that of 'European' PIE, that is, the last
common ancestor of Germanic, Celtic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic, which
he alleges to have been spoken as late as 2000 BC, in Europe. I'm not
going to criticise his reconstruction, because it is not necessary.
The point is that those languages, so far as they are used to talk
about modern things, all have already an extensive vocabulary in
common - which has nothing to do with PIE.
I am rather speaking of Latin, of course. Indeed, on all counts, Latin
is a superior international language to his PIE. It already has an
extensive history of being used to talk about all subjects; its
grammar, while complex, is less so than any reasonable PIE would be;
it has an already-existing literature and needs no such promotion. The
only criticism one could make against Latin is that it has a history
of elitism; but even if that is a strike against it, it is but a minor
one.
Esperanto also is clearly superior to PIE as a constructed language;
it is designed to be, and in fact is, substantially easier to learn
than any natural language, and has a large number of speakers and
history of use.
Of course, this is all academic as we know that English will be the
interlanguage of the foreseeable future, but that only makes it a more
laughable idea. If this were created for personal fulfillment, it
would be fine, but when it's being seriously promoted as the
international language, someone has a screw loose.
Andrew Usher
António Marques
> http://dnghu.org/
>
> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
YOU try to convince the wikipedia monkeys that this is simply a load of
garbage. Others have tried and tired.
James Hogg
I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
"Give us this day our daily bread" is:
Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
--
James
Panu
>
> Esperanto also is clearly superior to PIE as a constructed language;
> it is designed to be, and in fact is, substantially easier to learn
> than any natural language, and has a large number of speakers and
> history of use.
Esperanto is not inherently superior to anything. The main reason to
prefer Esperanto to other auxlang proposals is, that there are loads
of literature and learning aids available, which dnghe doesn't have.
This is a social and cultural fact that does not make Esperanto
linguistically any better or worse than other auxlangs.
I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
new proposals won't succeed.
Panu
Lots of people will be willing to learn Na'vi, and if Dnghe was
proposed as a conlang and not as an auxlang, people would be quite
happy to adopt it. Its problem is that it is marketed as an auxlang.
Peter T. Daniels
> http://dnghu.org/
>
> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>
> It is a quite laughable idea, and hard to know where to start in
> criticism of it. It is _for practical purposes_ a constructed,
> artificial language if it is actually used, as it has no history. That
> it is a reconstruction may be linguistically relevant, but I don't see
> the practical use of it. The grammatical complexity of it, though, is
> relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that it
> definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple grammar,
> while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular possible.
> That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is toward
> simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not so in
> many other language families.
The language spoken by the first Indo-European community was not
"about the most complex and irregular possible" -- there's no reason
to suppose it was any more complicated than any other human language.
However, reconstructed PIE is a collection of formulas that needs to
take care of every development identifiable in the daughter languages,
no matter what their origins.
António Marques
> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> new proposals won't succeed.
I disagree:
- e*******o may be the most widely known 'auxlang', but it's still very
little used and if the idea of an 'auxlang' ever does take off it may well
have nothing to do with e*******o. It's as if you were saying in the 16th
century that nothing would ever be able to replace latin as an international
language, or english now.
- if you want to promote an 'auxlang' and you're not already a fan of
e*******o, odds are that you think it best to have no 'auxlang' at all than
have e*******o be the 'auxlang'.
Helmut Richter
> I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
> "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>
> Qaqodjutenom bharsiom nser�m edjew dasdhi-nos.
Not voluntarily, of course. But if the European Commission prescribes it
as a rule that has to be transformed into national law ... just like the
ban on light bulbs ...
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
This is why Panu started his sentence with "if". Had he just said "you
must promote Esperanto", your criticism were justified, but he didn't.
--
Helmut Richter
António Marques
No... he said "if you want to promote an 'auxlang' you must promote
Esperanto because...". I presented two reasons why, granting his 'if', one
still wouldn't promote esperanto.
Harlan Messinger
> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> new proposals won't succeed.
>
There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
Regarding the second sentence: What of it, given that proposals to
establish Esperanto as an international auxlang also don't succeed?
Panu
> Panu wrote (08-02-2010 14:03):
>
> > I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> > auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> > realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> > new proposals won't succeed.
>
> I disagree:
>
> - e*******o may be the most widely known 'auxlang', but it's still very
> little used and if the idea of an 'auxlang' ever does take off it may well
> have nothing to do with e*******o. It's as if you were saying in the 16th
> century that nothing would ever be able to replace latin as an international
> language, or english now.
That is as may be. However, in the world we are living in, there is
really no rival to English as a lingua franca, and in a similar way,
if you have ideological reasons to oppose the use of a natural
language as a lingua franca as a matter of principle, then you'd
better adopt Esperanto. Flawed as it may be, it is at this very moment
the only artificial auxiliary language of any consequence.
Rival projects might be interesting as artistic languages, but
Esperanto has already a pool of speakers and some original cultural
output (books, websites etc.). Any rival project will be a grammar, a
primer, and a chrestomathy of probably translated texts.
Esperanto obviously isn't linguistically or aesthetically particularly
impressive. Any old artistic language, such as those devised by Mark
Rosenfelder of Verdurian fame, is on both counts much more
interesting. However, Esperanto has by now lots of cultural clout and
tradition and that's what counts.
I am not an Esperantist, I don't particularly like the language.
However, I don't get this neurotic, anti-Esperantist attitude some
people have. My advice to you and other people reacting in the same
way is, cut the crap. I don't understand why some people violently and
convulsively disagree when somebody says something even moderately
positive about Esperanto.
On the other hand, my advice to Esperantists is, cut that God-awful
crap about it being beautiful, linguistically sound etc., and focus on
realpolitik and tradition. Say: OK; it might be flawed, it might be
ugly, it might be Eurocentric, but it is a fact of life that it is the
only artificial auxiliary language with any success, and if you don't
like that, go learn Sindarin or Klingon, they are artistic, but we
don't do arts here.
> - if you want to promote an 'auxlang' and you're not already a fan of
> e*******o, odds are that you think it best to have no 'auxlang' at all than
> have e*******o be the 'auxlang'.
That's right. If you want an auxlang, go learn Esperanto, and if you
don't like it, that's just too bad.
Panu
<hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
> Panu wrote:
> > I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> > auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> > realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> > new proposals won't succeed.
>
> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs. Those I knew
about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
(the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
born from personal grudge).
>
> Regarding the second sentence: What of it, given that proposals to
> establish Esperanto as an international auxlang also don't succeed?
Esperantists will probably go on as before. The language already has
so much momentum and tradition.
Cece
Anglic? What do you think of Basic English?
António Marques
There's just one problem with your assessment: you give e*******o more
relevance than it does have.
>> - if you want to promote an 'auxlang' and you're not already a fan of
>> e*******o, odds are that you think it best to have no 'auxlang' at all than
>> have e*******o be the 'auxlang'.
>
> That's right. If you want an auxlang, go learn Esperanto, and if you
> don't like it, that's just too bad.
The fact is: if you do like e*******o as an 'auxlang', too bad.
Panu
I prefer Tok Pisin.
António Marques
> On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
>> Panu wrote:
>>> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
>>> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
>>> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
>>> new proposals won't succeed.
>>
>> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
>> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
>> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs. Those I knew
> about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
> (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> born from personal grudge).
Nobody (for only a slightly wider scope of the word) has heard of e*******o
either.
>> Regarding the second sentence: What of it, given that proposals to
>> establish Esperanto as an international auxlang also don't succeed?
>
> Esperantists will probably go on as before. The language already has
> so much momentum and tradition.
'So much momentum and tradition', which actually amount to precious little.
Many things had an enormous momentum and tradition until the day someone
came up with something that blew all that out of the water.
Panu
Nope. I still resent your obsessive, and convulsive anti-Esperantism.
I think you are being irrational and unscientific. It is bad enough
that some Esperantists, such as the original poster, are reduced to
obviously chauvinistic fury by other auxlang proposals. It is worse if
linguists are reduced to obviously unscientific fury by the very
mention of Esperanto.
Panu
> Panu wrote (08-02-2010 15:59):
>
>
>
> > On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> > <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
> >> Panu wrote:
> >>> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> >>> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> >>> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> >>> new proposals won't succeed.
>
> >> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
> >> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
> >> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
> > Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs. Those I knew
> > about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
> > (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> > born from personal grudge).
>
> Nobody (for only a slightly wider scope of the word) has heard of e*******o
> either.
Come on, you know perfectly well that you are talking nonsense.
>
> >> Regarding the second sentence: What of it, given that proposals to
> >> establish Esperanto as an international auxlang also don't succeed?
>
> > Esperantists will probably go on as before. The language already has
> > so much momentum and tradition.
>
> 'So much momentum and tradition', which actually amount to precious little.
If a language has a printing press, a literature, and an Internet
presence, it has an enormous edge over a language which has one non-
fluent speaker, a grammar, a primer, and a chrestomathy.
>
> Many things had an enormous momentum and tradition until the day someone
> came up with something that blew all that out of the water.
Yes. Modern media, such as ceramic tables, papyri, parchment, and
printing press, have always tended to favor metropolitan languages
over unwritten rural dialects. As we know, Irish was almost entirely
ousted by English, because Irish relied on oral tradition, folklore,
and manuscripts while English had a printing press. So?
António Marques
I am not a linguist, as everybody can tell, and all I'm pointing out is that
your 'e*******o or nothing' argument is flawed, which is completely
independent of the merits or lack thereof of e*******o. Your argument (which
came out of nothing, no one was discussing e*******o as such) is flawed both
because its premise is false and because the conclusion doesn't follow. If
you think that pointing that out is an exhibition of raving fury, then you
have a problem with this subject matter.
As for me, I *do* have a problem with the frothing attitude that 'everything
must give way to X regardless of X's faults because X is the way to go
because [whatever]'. That's exactly the same rationale behind 'no one can
criticise the commander-in-chief' and I find it despicable. Notice the
'whatever' in '[whatever]'.
(I'm not saying you're despicable. Quite honestly, I'm surprised to see you
adopting this attitude. Next thing you'll be calling for the eradication of
the 'alternatives' to 'Kernewek kemmyn'.)
António Marques
French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
Commercial UNIX has all but given way to 'Linux'.
And actually, I was thinking more along these lines: if *ever* an 'auxlang'
develops (i.e. something not native to anyone), it will be out of a
government effort, and it won't matter one iota what there was before such
effort began. An 'auxlang' will not emerge by itself, so whatever unofficial
success unofficial auxlang candidates acquire will be the least relevant
thing. (Conversely, if e*o were to rise by itself, it would already have,
it's not like the thing is new.)
Joachim Pense
> On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
>> Panu wrote:
>> > I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
>> > auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
>> > realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
>> > new proposals won't succeed.
>>
>> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
>> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
>> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs. Those I knew
> about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure),
There's even a Wikipedia in Volapük.
> Esperanto
> (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> born from personal grudge).
>
Some time ago, I occasionally read in the europa.* newsgroups. They had
(among others) also articles in Interlingua, and this language seems to be
very easy to read (in particular if you had some contact with Latin, and/or
a romance language).
Joachim
--
My favourite # 64: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2R0Rq55-tc>
My favourite # 66: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac>
Joachim Pense
>
> On the other hand, my advice to Esperantists is, cut that God-awful
> crap about it being beautiful, linguistically sound etc., and focus on
> realpolitik and tradition. Say: OK; it might be flawed, it might be
> ugly, it might be Eurocentric,
Eurocentric is not a flaw in this case, as the proposal this thread is about
is on having a lingua franca for Europe only.
Joachim
--
My favourite # 8: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCu83KvIb7M>
Joachim Pense
>
> relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that it
> definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple grammar,
> while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular possible.
> That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is toward
> simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not so in
> many other language families.
I have the impression that both Greek and Sanskrit are _more_ complex than
PIE, due to innovations and obfuscations introduced by sound shifts.
Joachim
--
My favourite # 32: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmNwRakOoSA>
My favourite # 24: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO0f2Yb7DAY>
Joachim Pense
So what auxlang would you promote instead if you had to?
Joachim
--
My favourite # 36: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSEwfqs-VM>
My favourite # 29: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-ddWOZ4EDI>
Harlan Messinger
> On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
>> Panu wrote:
>>> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
>>> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
>>> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
>>> new proposals won't succeed.
>> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
>> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
>> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs.
They just came into existence with no one's awareness? What are you
talking about?
> Those I knew
> about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
> (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> born from personal grudge).
Non sequitur. Each of these languages has a group of proponents behind
it, regardless of whether they're known to the greater public.
>> Regarding the second sentence: What of it, given that proposals to
>> establish Esperanto as an international auxlang also don't succeed?
>
> Esperantists will probably go on as before. The language already has
> so much momentum and tradition.
Which has nothing to do with the proposition of yours that I contested.
Harlan Messinger
Do you realize that nothing you've just said supports your earlier
contentions?
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
I rather like Esperanto and Interlingua, but for different reasons.
Neither are very beautiful, BTW.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Adam Funk
> Andrew Usher wrote (08-02-2010 13:25):
>> http://dnghu.org/
>>
>> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
>> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
>> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
>> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>
> YOU try to convince the wikipedia monkeys that this is simply a load of
> garbage. Others have tried and tired.
Why do you considerable "wikipedia monkeys" acceptable but not
criticism of google groupers? You're even using a server that
commemorates the September that never ended.
--
I heard that Hans Christian Andersen lifted the title for "The Little
Mermaid" off a Red Lobster Menu. [Bucky Katt]
Adam Funk
> On 2010-02-08, António Marques wrote:
>
>> Andrew Usher wrote (08-02-2010 13:25):
>>> http://dnghu.org/
>>>
>>> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
>>> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
>>> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
>>> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>>
>> YOU try to convince the wikipedia monkeys that this is simply a load of
>> garbage. Others have tried and tired.
>
> Why do you considerable "wikipedia monkeys" acceptable but not
[oops, should be "consider"]
> criticism of google groupers? You're even using a server that
> commemorates the September that never ended.
--
I spend almost as much time figuring out what's wrong with my computer
as I do actually using it. Networked software, especially, requires
frequent updates and maintenance, all of which gets in the way of
doing routine work. (Stoll 1995)
António Marques
> On 2010-02-08, António Marques wrote:
>
>> Andrew Usher wrote (08-02-2010 13:25):
>>> http://dnghu.org/
>>>
>>> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
>>> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
>>> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
>>> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>>
>> YOU try to convince the wikipedia monkeys that this is simply a load of
>> garbage. Others have tried and tired.
>
> Why do you considerable "wikipedia monkeys" acceptable but not criticism
> of google groupers?
Because those are different things.
1. 'Wikipedia monkeys' does not refer to the whole of the wikipedia
'community'. I had in mind specifically the relentless guardians of
Wikipedia Rules who profess their ignorance of the matters being contended
but insist on keepingInformationAway/defendingWrongInformation because they
think they're following 'process' and 'process' will ultimately be conducive
to good results. Not infrequently I've seen how some troll is able to hold
pages hostage for days because 'process' can't decide between the troll and
the good-one, and instead of making an effort to understand what the issue
is about monkeys choose to block everything and revert to the first trollish
version. Until some senior editor who does understand something comes by and
solves the problem. Now you may say that what matters is that the problem
gets solved - but you ignore the distressing, life-sapping fight one has to
go through so that the dispute may be noticed.
2. 'Google groupers' are not a group and the rants against GG have very
little to do with GG* and/or are unreasonable. GG has a poor UI, but that's
a problem for whoever uses it, not anybody else.
(*) All the problems existed, no more nor less annoying, long before there
was GG.
> You're even using a server that commemorates the September that never
> ended.
That's tongue in cheek. 90% of everything is crud, remember? Why should
newsgroups be any different?
Christian Weisgerber
> I have the impression that both Greek and Sanskrit are _more_ complex than
> PIE, due to innovations and obfuscations introduced by sound shifts.
On the other hand, PIE might look more regular than it actually was
as an artifact of being only a reconstruction.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Adam Funk
> Adam Funk wrote (08-02-2010 19:37):
>> Why do you considerable "wikipedia monkeys" acceptable but not criticism
>> of google groupers?
>
> Because those are different things.
>
> 1. 'Wikipedia monkeys' does not refer to the whole of the wikipedia
> 'community'. I had in mind specifically the relentless guardians of
> Wikipedia Rules who profess their ignorance of the matters being contended
> but insist on keepingInformationAway/defendingWrongInformation because they
> think they're following 'process' and 'process' will ultimately be conducive
> to good results. Not infrequently I've seen how some troll is able to hold
> pages hostage for days because 'process' can't decide between the troll and
> the good-one, and instead of making an effort to understand what the issue
> is about monkeys choose to block everything and revert to the first trollish
> version. Until some senior editor who does understand something comes by and
> solves the problem. Now you may say that what matters is that the problem
> gets solved - but you ignore the distressing, life-sapping fight one has to
> go through so that the dispute may be noticed.
>
> 2. 'Google groupers' are not a group and the rants against GG have very
> little to do with GG* and/or are unreasonable. GG has a poor UI, but that's
> a problem for whoever uses it, not anybody else.
>
> (*) All the problems existed, no more nor less annoying, long before there
> was GG.
I'm not claiming that all GG users are idiots, but GG's web interface
encourages such problems on a larger scale than before, and
facilitates spamming. Google keeps monopoly on the Deja archive and
keeps making it less useful. GG is definitely a net (in the sense of
net vs gross) polluter of the USENET.
--
Leila: "I don't think he knows."
Agent Rogersz: "Increase the voltage."
Leila: "What if he's innocent?"
Agent Rogersz: "No one is innocent. Proceed" (Cox 1984)
Joachim Pense
> Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>
>> I have the impression that both Greek and Sanskrit are _more_ complex
>> than PIE, due to innovations and obfuscations introduced by sound shifts.
>
> On the other hand, PIE might look more regular than it actually was
> as an artifact of being only a reconstruction.
>
Yes, probably. The reconstructions of the various forms might point to
variants centuries apart; I expect a reconstruction to be driven forward
(internally) so long until one arrives at a regular form.
--
My favourite # 18: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQMRquh7gho>
My favourite # 63: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFZoYXcch2o>
António Marques
> I'm not claiming that all GG users are idiots, but GG's web interface
> encourages such problems on a larger scale than before, and
> facilitates spamming. Google keeps monopoly on the Deja archive and
> keeps making it less useful. GG is definitely a net (in the sense of
> net vs gross) polluter of the USENET.
Well, I don't see it that way. Nor the larger scale, nor the spamming
facilitation. You're entitled to that opinion, and are not alone in it, but
I think it is wrong.
(Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
benl...@ihug.co.nz
> Andrew Usher wrote:
> >http://dnghu.org/
>
> > Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
> > sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
> > European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
> > it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>
> > criticism of it. It is _for practical purposes_ a constructed,
> > artificial language if it is actually used, as it has no history.
> > That it is a reconstruction may be linguistically relevant, but I
> > don't see the practical use of it. The grammatical complexity of it,
> > though, is relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that
> > it definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple
> > grammar, while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular
> > possible. That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is
> > toward simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not
> > so in many other language families.
>
> > common ancestor of Germanic, Celtic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic, which
> > he alleges to have been spoken as late as 2000 BC, in Europe. I'm not
> > going to criticise his reconstruction, because it is not necessary.
> > The point is that those languages, so far as they are used to talk
> > about modern things, all have already an extensive vocabulary in
> > common - which has nothing to do with PIE.
>
> > I am rather speaking of Latin, of course. Indeed, on all counts,
> > Latin is a superior international language to his PIE. It already has
> > an extensive history of being used to talk about all subjects; its
> > grammar, while complex, is less so than any reasonable PIE would be;
> > it has an already-existing literature and needs no such promotion.
> > The only criticism one could make against Latin is that it has a
> > history of elitism; but even if that is a strike against it, it is
> > but a minor one.
>
> > Esperanto also is clearly superior to PIE as a constructed language;
> > it is designed to be, and in fact is, substantially easier to learn
> > than any natural language, and has a large number of speakers and
> > history of use.
>
> > Of course, this is all academic as we know that English will be the
> > interlanguage of the foreseeable future, but that only makes it a
> > more laughable idea. If this were created for personal fulfillment,
> > it would be fine, but when it's being seriously promoted as the
> > international language, someone has a screw loose.
>
> I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
> "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>
> Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
>
> --
> James
I agree. Too complicated and not beautiful enough. But did you notice
the nice bear logo? I say give some of that money to Franz.
Magdalenian suits Europe better -- simple, long, soft, furry and warm!
Ross Clark
Panu
>
> And actually, I was thinking more along these lines: if *ever* an 'auxlang'
> develops (i.e. something not native to anyone), it will be out of a
> government effort, and it won't matter one iota what there was before such
> effort began.
I don't really think government effort will be decisive. I think
sociolinguistic changes usually come to fruition in a way that cannot
be predicted.
An 'auxlang' will not emerge by itself, so whatever unofficial
> success unofficial auxlang candidates acquire will be the least relevant
> thing. (Conversely, if e*o were to rise by itself, it would already have,
> it's not like the thing is new.)
The fact is, though, that no other artificial language has been able
to sustain an international subculture with cultural productivity for
so long as Esperanto. And people don't learn languages from grammars,
they learn them from books, magazines, websites and conversation.
Peter Moylan
> (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
Usenet archive.
To make matters worse, searches through the archives don't always work
properly. Google needs to hire someone who knows how to design a search
engine.
--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.
Peter Moylan
> I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
> "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>
> Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
>
The PIEans were Christians?
António Marques
> James Hogg wrote:
> > I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
> > "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>
> > Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
>
> The PIEans were Christians?
Of course. That's why analys and hir ilk loathe them.
António Marques
> António Marques wrote:
> > (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
>
> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
> far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
> DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
> continue to be consulted at the Google site.
Usenet is public. There's nothing stopping people from coming up with
an alternative to GG. That no one can be bothered is a different
problem. That no one could be bothered to put their money into it is
why Dejanews had to be sold to Google - if it hadn't been, it would
simply have disappeared, with nothing left in its place.
(The misuse of the word 'monopoly' is something I've come to find very
annoying.)
> In practice, all of the
> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
> Usenet archive.
>
> To make matters worse, searches through the archives don't always work
> properly. Google needs to hire someone who knows how to design a search
> engine.
Yes, this much is true. But I don't think it will happen.
Peter Moylan
> On Feb 8, 6:04 pm, Cece <ceceliaarmstr...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Anglic? What do you think of Basic English?
>
> I prefer Tok Pisin.
We have practical evidence that people with a whole variety of native
languages were able to learn Tok Pisin. It's not at all clear to me that
it's possible to become fluent in Basic English without first learning
ordinary English. It relies too heavily on unstated cultural background.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Sorry, I forgot "thick". ;-)
António Marques
> On Feb 8, 6:54 pm, António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt> wrote:
>
>
>
> > And actually, I was thinking more along these lines: if *ever* an 'auxlang'
> > develops (i.e. something not native to anyone), it will be out of a
> > government effort, and it won't matter one iota what there was before such
> > effort began.
>
> I don't really think government effort will be decisive. I think
> sociolinguistic changes usually come to fruition in a way that cannot
> be predicted.
Maybe or maybe not. The spread of french, english or indonesian wasn't
alien government action to them. (I think I'll start writing this
way.)
> > An 'auxlang' will not emerge by itself, so whatever unofficial
> > success unofficial auxlang candidates acquire will be the least relevant
> > thing. (Conversely, if e*o were to rise by itself, it would already have,
> > it's not like the thing is new.)
>
> The fact is, though, that no other artificial language has been able
> to sustain an international subculture with cultural productivity for
> so long as Esperanto.
But that's simply of matter of parallax. You took what you consider to
be the most widespread conlang and held that as a standard. But from a
different point of view, that standard isn't significant. You're
claiming 1 is inferior to 10, but don't want to hear that, alongside
1000000, 1 isn't behind 10 by that much.
> And people don't learn languages from grammars,
> they learn them from books, magazines, websites and conversation.
People learn what they are required to learn, from whatever source
available. A very small number of people have learning as a hobby, but
those aren't the issue here.
Joachim Pense
> António Marques wrote:
>
>> (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
>
> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
> far as I know - Usenet archive.
Complete from the point when they began collecting.
> Then Google came along and bought out
> DejaNews.
DejaNews was painfully slow. Google increased the archive a lot by pulling
together other archives of usenet posts, adding over a decade of older posts
> Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
> Usenet archive.
AFAIK, they have problems with their article indexing, so the articles
aren't lost, only many are just not found now.
Joachim
--
My favourite # 49: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OpiCUfZyco>
Percival P. Cassidy
> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
> far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
> DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
> Usenet archive.
>
> To make matters worse, searches through the archives don't always work
> properly. Google needs to hire someone who knows how to design a search
> engine.
Hear! Hear! Google's search engine doesn't even deal properly with a
quoted search string (and Yahoo!'s is no better). E.g., I am looking for
references to my old friend, Giles Wilkinson, so I put "Giles Wilkinson"
(complete with the quote marks) in the search box. In addition to
occurrences of "Giles Wilkinson", Google claims that
"Smith, Giles; Wilkinson, Thomas"
and
"Robertson, Giles (Wilkinson Metals, Inc.)"
are matches.
If I enter the search as "Wilkinson, Giles",
Google claims that
"... by Stephen Wilkinson. Giles Pomeroy, on the other hand,..."
and
"Robert Wilkinson-Giles"
and
"Robert Wilkinson Giles"
are matches.
I can no longer recall the specific strings, but I have encountered
situations where Google ignores multiple non-alphanumeric sequences.
Perce
António Marques
I *think* it always does. But otherwise it probably wouldn't be able
to find anything. Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to
misspell it!...
anal...@hotmail.com
> On Feb 8, 8:25 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >http://dnghu.org/
>
> > Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
> > sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
> > European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
> > it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>
> > It is a quite laughable idea, and hard to know where to start in
> > criticism of it. It is _for practical purposes_ a constructed,
> > artificial language if it is actually used, as it has no history. That
> > it is a reconstruction may be linguistically relevant, but I don't see
> > the practical use of it. The grammatical complexity of it, though, is
> > relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that it
> > definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple grammar,
> > while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular possible.
> > That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is toward
> > simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not so in
> > many other language families.
>
> "about the most complex and irregular possible" -- there's no reason
> to suppose it was any more complicated than any other human language.
It is an assumption that there was a point in time when there was only
one language that, had we observed it back then, knowing what we know
now, would call it IE. Trubetzkoy says that as far as back as we can
look, there were several IE languages.
>
> However, reconstructed PIE is a collection of formulas that needs to
> take care of every development identifiable in the daughter languages,
> no matter what their origins.- Hide quoted text -
>
Two languages are posited here. A real language, that COULD have
given rise to descendants.
The reconstructed language (i.e.,one of its perhaps hundreds of
variants) - could have given rise to descendants purely based on
phonology and morphology (Sanskrit cannot be derived from it, but
thats another story) - but if it was never spoken by anyone, it never
existed and could not have descendants.
> - Show quoted text -
Jerry Friedman
Very true, but I wish they provided an option to search for exactly
what you typed, including punctuation. Under Advanced Search, if they
think hiding it is necessary.
--
Jerry Friedman
Jerry Friedman
> James Hogg wrote:
> > I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
> > "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>
> > Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
And that's without laryngeals , whatever they are.
> The PIEans were Christians?
The reconstructed ones are. You do *not* want to meet an
unreconstructed Proto-Indo-European.
--
Jerry Friedman
Evan Kirshenbaum
> António Marques wrote:
>
>> (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
>
> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
> far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
> DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
> material is patchy and unreliable.
What's missing? I see postings of mine going back to early 1985 (on
net.sf-lovers, when I was posting via the SF-LOVERS DIGEST list). The
only thing I've noticed is that if you ask for things ordered by date,
it only goes back to 2000. If you say "Search by relevance", even
with a date restriction, it appears to get everything.
Modulo rare occasions when they do seem to drop everything but the
last month or so, but I presume that that's a response to temporarily
high traffic levels.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are two types of people -
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |those who are one of the two types
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |of people, and those who are not.
| Leigh Blue Caldwell
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
DKleinecke
wrote:
I believe I will keep on with my current obsession - how did Sanskrit
come to be ( if not as a derivative of Indo-European )?
Here is a possible scenario - Sanskrit is the original language of
mankind. No one, not even analyst, can be required to explain how that
original language came about. At the moment we have no plausible
suggestions on the table - just a lot of hand-waving.
That original language was preserved only in north central India.
Perhaps it was created there, perhaps it is a secondary center. As
people wandered away from India their language deteriorated into all
the various languages we know and love. But in India Sanskrit was
preserved perfectly ( divine assistance can be assumed ). It took a
long time but finally the sacred scriptures were complete. Now the
divine protection was removed and Sanskrit became no more than just
another language and suffered decay and ultimate death.
This is not strictly scientific - I introduced a little divine
assistance. If you don't like divine assistance perhaps you will
accept a many-worlds view and accept that we live in a world instance
where all the possible events to change Sanskrit never happened.
Peter T. Daniels
> Panu (in sci.lang):
>
> > On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> > <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
> >> Panu wrote:
> >> > I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> >> > auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> >> > realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> >> > new proposals won't succeed.
>
> >> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
> >> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
> > Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs. Those I knew
> > about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure),
>
> There's even a Wikipedia in Volapük.
>
> > Esperanto
> > (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> > born from personal grudge).
>
> Some time ago, I occasionally read in the europa.* newsgroups. They had
> (among others) also articles in Interlingua, and this language seems to be
> very easy to read (in particular if you had some contact with Latin, and/or
> a romance language).
Years ago there was someone who regularly posted here in Interlingua.
It wasn't hard to read.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> I rather like Esperanto and Interlingua, but for different reasons.
It is claimed that Interlingua can be passively understood by Romance
speakers. If this has a corollary that Romance languages can be
passively understood by Interlingua speakers, then Interlingua would
be a useful starting point for learning Romance languages.
> Neither are very beautiful, BTW.
That should be "Neither IS very beautiful".
Stan Brown
<anton...@sapo.pt>:
> 2. 'Google groupers' are not a group and the rants against GG have very
> little to do with GG* and/or are unreasonable. GG has a poor UI, but that's
> a problem for whoever uses it, not anybody else.
Wrong -- it's a problem for everyone who reads what it produces,
which is a larger group than its users.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...
Stan Brown
mainz.eu>:
> Peter Moylan (in sci.lang):
> > Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
> > continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
> > older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
> > material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
> > Usenet archive.
> AFAIK, they have problems with their article indexing, so the articles
> aren't lost, only many are just not found now.
And for *us*, what difference does it make. There is no practical
difference between an article that is lost (destroyed) and an article
that is lost (unfindable in the indexes).
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
>> That's right. If you want an auxlang, go learn Esperanto, and if you
>> don't like it, that's just too bad.
>
>The fact is: if you do like e*******o as an 'auxlang', too bad.
I do like Esperanto (myself, I have no problems with mentioning the
E-word) for its own sake, not especially as an auxlang. I knew about
Esperanto and tried to learn and use it long before I even knew the
expression "auxlang" (although I did know the concept, of course,
"hulptaal").
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Ruud Harmsen
<ranjit_...@yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:
>On Feb 8, 2:11�pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
>> I rather like Esperanto and Interlingua, but for different reasons.
>
>It is claimed that Interlingua can be passively understood by Romance
>speakers.
No, by those who know one or more Romance languages OR English.
>If this has a corollary that Romance languages can be
>passively understood by Interlingua speakers, then Interlingua would
>be a useful starting point for learning Romance languages.
Mwah, the grammar is rather strange in comparison with the real thing,
like using in imperfective (esseva = was) for all past tenses.
>> Neither are very beautiful, BTW.
>
>That should be "Neither IS very beautiful".
Yes, on second thought, I think you right. I am, of course you are
right, but do I also "feel" this myself? A bit, not quite.
Both are, neither is. Yes, seems to make sense.
James Hogg
> James Hogg wrote:
>
>> I don't think there's much risk that anyone will adopt a language where
>> "Give us this day our daily bread" is:
>>
>> Qāqodjūtenom bharsiom ṇseróm edjḗw dasdhi-nos.
>>
> The PIEans were Christians?
No, but they had to go to the baker's every morning, just like everybody
else.
--
James
Ruud Harmsen
>On Feb 8, 2:11�pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
>> I rather like Esperanto and Interlingua, but for different reasons.
>
>It is claimed that Interlingua can be passively understood by Romance
>speakers.
The principle of word choice is nice. If a word exists in 3 of 4
languages of English, French, Italian and Spanish/Portuguese, it is
Interlingua.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/interlingua.htm
So then what do you do with English street, French rue, Spanish calle,
Portuguese rua? Spanish and Portuguese are treated as a whole by
Interlingua, but in this case they have a different word, so that
doesn't count?
Yet, "street" is "strata" in Interlingua. Sp/Pt do have estrada, but
they mean road rather than street. This makes Interlingua less
precise.
A similar problem exists with the words "house", "maison", "casa".
Italian also has casa (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa) but that
means 2 languages, not 3. And German (Haus) and Russion (dom) don't
help. According to http://tinyurl.com/ykqgc2s, both "casa" and "domo"
nevertheless exist.
In fact, it's difficult with all the common word, that English has
from Germanic, and easier with the more learned words, which are
usually Romance in English too, so they more often coincide with
French, Italian and Ibero-Romance.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>> Many things had an enormous momentum and tradition until the day someone
>> came up with something that blew all that out of the water.
>
>Yes. Modern media, such as ceramic tables, papyri, parchment, and
>printing press, have always tended to favor metropolitan languages
>over unwritten rural dialects. As we know, Irish was almost entirely
>ousted by English, because Irish relied on oral tradition, folklore,
>and manuscripts while English had a printing press. So?
You mean that wasn't just suppression, violence and intentional
famine?
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
>French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
>language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
I like that word, thunk. It doesn't exist, but could have, and it
sounds good.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>There's even a Wikipedia in Volap�k.
And to my surprise, it is among the 100.000+ articles languages!:
http://wikipedia.org/
125.223 articles in Esperanto, 118.788 in Volap�k. 542.966 in
Portuguese, but is that a fair comparison, with all the freguesias
automatically generated in from statistical sources?
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
See also http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:KLJ
Ruud Harmsen
<hm.usenetr...@gavelcade.com>: in sci.lang:
>> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs.
>
>They just came into existence with no one's awareness? What are you
>talking about?
"Nobody" in this context is an idiom for "a disappointingly small
number of people, greater than zero". But you probably knew that
already.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
>continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
>older articles appear to have gone lost,
No. It could find myself from the dark ages. But some is lost, e.g.
the article I respond to in my first ever article. But remember,
everything relied on 2400 baud dial-in modems in those days. The
_only_ link between the US and EU started as 300 baud and remained
that for quite a while.
Ruud Harmsen
<Nob...@NotMyISP.net>: in sci.lang:
>On 02/08/10 05:48 pm, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
>> far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
>> DejaNews. Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
>> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
>> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
>> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
>> Usenet archive.
>>
>> To make matters worse, searches through the archives don't always work
>> properly. Google needs to hire someone who knows how to design a search
>> engine.
>
>Hear! Hear! Google's search engine doesn't even deal properly with a
>quoted search string (and Yahoo!'s is no better). E.g., I am looking for
>references to my old friend, Giles Wilkinson, so I put "Giles Wilkinson"
>(complete with the quote marks) in the search box. In addition to
>occurrences of "Giles Wilkinson", Google claims that
>
>"Smith, Giles; Wilkinson, Thomas"
>
>and
>
>"Robertson, Giles (Wilkinson Metals, Inc.)"
>
>are matches.
Try Giles@Wilkinson
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>>"Smith, Giles; Wilkinson, Thomas"
>>
>>and
>>
>>"Robertson, Giles (Wilkinson Metals, Inc.)"
>>
>>are matches.
>
>Try Giles@Wilkinson
In fact, I get the same results when using "Giles Wilkinson", all with
the two names directly adjacent.
Ilpo
> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:09:01 +0000 from António Marques
> <antonio...@sapo.pt>:
> > GG has a poor UI, but that's
> > a problem for whoever uses it, not anybody else.
>
> Wrong -- it's a problem for everyone who reads what it produces,
> which is a larger group than its users.
If you read this, please let me know what problems this post of mine
caused to you and others. So far I've seen no reason to change from GG
- in fact it's the only option for me if I want to reach Usenet from
work -, but I might consider changing my position if I turn out to be
spreading annoyance amongst other newsgroupers by using GG.
Panu
<hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
> Panu wrote:
> > On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
> > <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
> >> Panu wrote:
> >>> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
> >>> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
> >>> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
> >>> new proposals won't succeed.
> >> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
> >> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
> >> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>
>
> They just came into existence with no one's awareness? What are you
> talking about?
Come on. Esperantism is a minority subculture all right, but if you
ask the man of the street to name just one attempt at auxlang, chances
are that he will name Esperanto, but not Ido,Volapuk, or Interlingua.
I don't know about the planet you are living on, but on my planet,
Esperanto is mentioned in every single book about commendable and good
hobbies for young people.
>
> > Those I knew
> > about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
> > (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
> > born from personal grudge).
>
> Non sequitur. Each of these languages has a group of proponents behind
> it, regardless of whether they're known to the greater public.
That is as may be, but media visibility is everything. Klingon has now
fluent speakers thanks to its media visibility, although it has been
purposefully designed to be difficult and unpronounceable, and its
existing vocabulary is mostly about commanding spaceships in
interstellar warfare, which is at the present stage of technological
development a minority interest in society.
António Marques
> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:09:01 +0000 from António Marques
> <anton...@sapo.pt>:
>> 2. 'Google groupers' are not a group and the rants against GG have very
>> little to do with GG* and/or are unreasonable. GG has a poor UI, but that's
>> a problem for whoever uses it, not anybody else.
>
> Wrong -- it's a problem for everyone who reads what it produces,
> which is a larger group than its users.
<Sigh> In what way is a *poor UI* a problem for anyone except the users??
You don't read before commenting, and then have the nerve to deride the noobs.
António Marques
> Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:09:52 +0100 from Joachim Pense<snob@pense-
> mainz.eu>:
>> Peter Moylan (in sci.lang):
>>> Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
>>> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
>>> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
>>> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
>>> Usenet archive.
>> AFAIK, they have problems with their article indexing, so the articles
>> aren't lost, only many are just not found now.
>
> And for *us*, what difference does it make. There is no practical
> difference between an article that is lost (destroyed) and an article
> that is lost (unfindable in the indexes).
So you have no objection if someone goes to your house and puts everything
you currently don't know where it is into the paper shredder. Sheesh.
António Marques
You are, by giving him nothing to complain about.
lorad
> http://dnghu.org/
>
> Perhaps you have heard of it. A Spanish guy (who apparently gets some
> sort of government funding) advocates what he calls Modern Indo-
> European as an international language. Form seeing his conversations
> it doesn't seem he is tolerant for criticism of his proposal.
>
> It is a quite laughable idea, and hard to know where to start in
> criticism of it. It is _for practical purposes_ a constructed,
> artificial language if it is actually used, as it has no history. That
> it is a reconstruction may be linguistically relevant, but I don't see
> the practical use of it. The grammatical complexity of it, though, is
> relevant - the experience of Esperanto and such shows that it
> definitely is easier to start using a language with a simple grammar,
> while that of PIE is about the most complex and irregular possible.
> That's why the long-term trend in all branches of IE is toward
> simplification and regularisation of grammar, while it is not so in
> many other language families.
>
> common ancestor of Germanic, Celtic, Italic, and Balto-Slavic, which
> he alleges to have been spoken as late as 2000 BC, in Europe. I'm not
> going to criticise his reconstruction, because it is not necessary.
> The point is that those languages, so far as they are used to talk
> about modern things, all have already an extensive vocabulary in
> common - which has nothing to do with PIE.
>
> I am rather speaking of Latin, of course. Indeed, on all counts, Latin
> is a superior international language to his PIE. It already has an
> extensive history of being used to talk about all subjects; its
> grammar, while complex, is less so than any reasonable PIE would be;
> it has an already-existing literature and needs no such promotion. The
> only criticism one could make against Latin is that it has a history
> of elitism; but even if that is a strike against it, it is but a minor
> one.
>
> Esperanto also is clearly superior to PIE as a constructed language;
> it is designed to be, and in fact is, substantially easier to learn
> than any natural language, and has a large number of speakers and
> history of use.
>
> Of course, this is all academic as we know that English will be the
> interlanguage of the foreseeable future, but that only makes it a more
> laughable idea. If this were created for personal fulfillment, it
> would be fine, but when it's being seriously promoted as the
> international language, someone has a screw loose.
>
> Andrew Usher
Why re-invent the wheel?
English is already the world's major internationally used language.
Go with the flow.
Your desire to see coffee-club Esparanto replace English is futile.
James Hogg
Agreed, no need to re-invent the PIE qeklom.
--
James
Peter T. Daniels
Well put! There have been something like 80 postings in this thread in
the last day bitching about gg.
I'd rather see 80 postings from Franz and analyst41. (Maybe not "Bob.")
Peter T. Daniels
> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:54:21 +0000: António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt>:
> in sci.lang:
>
> >French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
> >language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
>
> I like that word, thunk. It doesn't exist, but could have, and it
> sounds good.
Of course it exists. You just don't see it because it isn't Standard
English, but it's very common.
And very natural -- drink drank drunk, sink sank sunk, sing sang sung.
Also bring brang brung.
Ain't analogy wonderful?
Peter T. Daniels
> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:57:00 -0500: Harlan Messinger
>
> >> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs.
>
> >They just came into existence with no one's awareness? What are you
> >talking about?
>
> "Nobody" in this context is an idiom for "a disappointingly small
> number of people, greater than zero". But you probably knew that
> already.
On some days, he posts like Brian.
Harlan Messinger
> On Feb 8, 5:28 pm, Ant�nio Marques <ento...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 8 Fev, 23:25, "Percival P. Cassidy" <Nob...@NotMyISP.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> On 02/08/10 05:48 pm, Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>> There used to be a web site called DejaNews, and it kept a complete - as
>>>> far as I know - Usenet archive. Then Google came along and bought out
>>>> continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
>>>> older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
>>>> material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a good
>>>> Usenet archive.
>>>> properly. Google needs to hire someone who knows how to design a search
>>>> engine.
>>> Hear! Hear! Google's search engine doesn't even deal properly with a
>>> quoted search string (and Yahoo!'s is no better). E.g., I am looking for
>>> references to my old friend, Giles Wilkinson, so I put "Giles Wilkinson"
>>> (complete with the quote marks) in the search box. In addition to
>>> occurrences of "Giles Wilkinson", Google claims that
>>> and
>>> "Robertson, Giles (Wilkinson Metals, Inc.)"
>>> are matches.
>>> Google claims that
>>> "... by Stephen Wilkinson. Giles Pomeroy, on the other hand,..."
>>> and
>>> "Robert Wilkinson-Giles"
>>> and
>>> "Robert Wilkinson Giles"
>>> are matches.
>>> I can no longer recall the specific strings, but I have encountered
>>> situations where Google ignores multiple non-alphanumeric sequences.
>> I *think* it always does. But otherwise it probably wouldn't be able
>> to find anything. Sometimes the only way to get what you want is to
>> misspell it!...
>
> Very true, but I wish they provided an option to search for exactly
> what you typed, including punctuation. Under Advanced Search, if they
> think hiding it is necessary.
That would be simply impossible. Google doesn't scan every page in its
archive from scratch each time someone sends a search request. If it
did, a search would take weeks if not months or years. Instead, pages
are indexed on words and sequences of words when they are scanned.
Indexes permit speedy lookups. But there isn't enough storage in the
universe for an index of every possible substring.
Helmut Richter
> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 07:13:42 -0800 (PST)
> From: Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net>
> Newsgroups: sci.lang, alt.usage.english
> Subject: Re: The most preposterous proposal ...
>
> On Feb 9, 2:54�am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
> > Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:54:21 +0000: Ant�nio Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt>:
> > in sci.lang:
> >
> > >French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
> > >language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
> >
> > I like that word, thunk. It doesn't exist, but could have, and it
> > sounds good.
>
> Of course it exists. You just don't see it because it isn't Standard
> English, but it's very common.
Moreover, the word "thunk" (probably a derivation from "think") once meant
a procedure fetching a parameter value for another procedure. The
technique, called "name call", is no longer automatically provided in
programming languages as it was in Algol 60, so the term is now obsolete.
Literature:
Gries, D.: Compiler Construction For Digital Computers. Wiley (New
York etc.) 1971, ISBN 0-471-32776-X, p.191:
The term "thunk" was coined by Ingerman(61a) for his routine and
the term has stuck.
Ingerman, P.Z.: Thunks. Comm. ACM 4 (1961), p.55-58
> And very natural -- drink drank drunk, sink sank sunk, sing sang sung.
>
> Also bring brang brung.
Ja, das musste hier bemorken werden.
--
Helmut Richter
Peter T. Daniels
> On Tue, 9 Feb 2010, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Feb 9, 2:54 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
> > > in sci.lang:
>
> > > >French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
> > > >language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
>
> > > I like that word, thunk. It doesn't exist, but could have, and it
> > > sounds good.
>
> > Of course it exists. You just don't see it because it isn't Standard
> > English, but it's very common.
>
> Moreover, the word "thunk" (probably a derivation from "think") once meant
> a procedure fetching a parameter value for another procedure. The
> technique, called "name call", is no longer automatically provided in
> programming languages as it was in Algol 60, so the term is now obsolete.
> Literature:
>
> Gries, D.: Compiler Construction For Digital Computers. Wiley (New
> York etc.) 1971, ISBN 0-471-32776-X, p.191:
>
> The term "thunk" was coined by Ingerman(61a) for his routine and
> the term has stuck.
>
> Ingerman, P.Z.: Thunks. Comm. ACM 4 (1961), p.55-58
Wouldn't "chunk" be involved?
> > And very natural -- drink drank drunk, sink sank sunk, sing sang sung.
>
> > Also bring brang brung.
>
> Ja, das musste hier bemorken werden.
No, no, say it isn't so -- analogy working to change the class of
Modern German verbs??
Harlan Messinger
> Adam Funk wrote (08-02-2010 20:59):
>
>> I'm not claiming that all GG users are idiots, but GG's web interface
>> encourages such problems on a larger scale than before, and
>> facilitates spamming. Google keeps monopoly on the Deja archive and
>> keeps making it less useful. GG is definitely a net (in the sense of
>> net vs gross) polluter of the USENET.
>
> Well, I don't see it that way. Nor the larger scale, nor the spamming
> facilitation. You're entitled to that opinion, and are not alone in it,
> but I think it is wrong.
>
> (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
Ordinarily, Usenet (NNTP) servers keep articles available for their
users for a predeterminate amount of time. Usenet archivers can only
archive articles that are still on a given NNTP server at the time the
archive indexes that server. If Deja was the only outfit indexing Usenet
in its first however many years, and Google bought Deja and is the only
outfit comprehensively archiving Usenet now, then Google has, not de
jure but de facto, a monopoly on the archives.
There are numerous other operations that index parts of Usenet. If you
do a search on some concept related to information technology, for
example, a number of discussion forum sites will come up that turn out
to be Usenet mirrors. But I don't know that any other company has the
expanse of coverage that Google has.
Harlan Messinger
That's fine and obvious, but I'm not letting him get away with using
hyperbole to defend his false remarks and fallacious reasoning.
Harlan Messinger
> On Feb 8, 7:57 pm, Harlan Messinger
> <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
>> Panu wrote:
>>> On Feb 8, 5:46 pm, Harlan Messinger
>>> <hm.usenetremovert...@gavelcade.com> wrote:
>>>> Panu wrote:
>>>>> I completely agree that if you want to promote an international
>>>>> auxlang these days, you must promote Esperanto. This is pure
>>>>> realpolitik: that particular slot has been filled by Esperanto, and
>>>>> new proposals won't succeed.
>>>> There are people who want to promote, and do promote, an international
>>>> auxlang these days, and yet are promoting a language that isn't
>>>> Esperanto. Hence, your first sentence above is false.
>>> Nobody has ever heard of other international auxlangs.
>> They just came into existence with no one's awareness? What are you
>> talking about?
>
> Come on. Esperantism is a minority subculture all right, but if you
> ask the man of the street to name just one attempt at auxlang, chances
> are that he will name Esperanto, but not Ido,Volapuk, or Interlingua.
This is still a non sequitur with respect to the remarks of yours with
which I took issue.
> I don't know about the planet you are living on, but on my planet,
> Esperanto is mentioned in every single book about commendable and good
> hobbies for young people.
Would you please keep your hyperbole on a leash? I'm certain that there
are books about hobbies that don't mention Esperanto. And it's *still*
irrelevant to the exception I've taken with your remarks.
>>> Those I knew
>>> about until recently were Volapuk (the spectacular failure), Esperanto
>>> (the only one known to the general public), and Ido (a rip-off brand
>>> born from personal grudge).
>> Non sequitur. Each of these languages has a group of proponents behind
>> it, regardless of whether they're known to the greater public.
>
> That is as may be, but media visibility is everything.
"Media visibility is everything" is not a permanent, unyielding law.
Your implication is that if a set of governments decided to choose a
common auxlang for official use, they would let media visibility
supersede any factors that actually related to the goals they intended
to accomplish through their decision.
> Klingon has now
> fluent speakers thanks to its media visibility, although it has been
> purposefully designed to be difficult and unpronounceable, and its
> existing vocabulary is mostly about commanding spaceships in
> interstellar warfare, which is at the present stage of technological
> development a minority interest in society.
I don't know why you are suddenly talking about Klingon. This is turning
into a Franz-style series of digressions.
António Marques
> António Marques wrote:
>> Adam Funk wrote (08-02-2010 20:59):
>>
>>> I'm not claiming that all GG users are idiots, but GG's web interface
>>> encourages such problems on a larger scale than before, and
>>> facilitates spamming. Google keeps monopoly on the Deja archive and
>>> keeps making it less useful. GG is definitely a net (in the sense of
>>> net vs gross) polluter of the USENET.
>>
>> Well, I don't see it that way. Nor the larger scale, nor the spamming
>> facilitation. You're entitled to that opinion, and are not alone in
>> it, but I think it is wrong.
>>
>> (Google keeps a monopoly on the Deja archive? Isn't Usenet public?)
>
> Ordinarily, Usenet (NNTP) servers keep articles available for their
> users for a predeterminate amount of time. Usenet archivers can only
> archive articles that are still on a given NNTP server at the time the
> archive indexes that server. If Deja was the only outfit indexing Usenet
> in its first however many years, and Google bought Deja and is the only
> outfit comprehensively archiving Usenet now, then Google has, not de
> jure but de facto, a monopoly on the archives.
Given that anyone can just go get the archived messages from
groups.google.com and store them elsewhere, I don't see where the 'monopoly'
is, let alone being 'kept'. In fact, I find that misuse of the term
'monopoly' hateful.
Next thing you know, the Vatican has a monopoly on the veneration of RC saints.
Harlan Messinger
Either you missed the part where I said it's de facto instead of de
jure, or you don't know what those mean (which I think is unlikely), or
you think the word "monopoly" implies an enforced condition while I don't.
Helmut Richter
German verbs that are surprisingly strong can be
- ancient forms, often conserved in dialects, especially southern:
geforchten<-f�rchten, gemalen<-malen, gelitten<-l�uten,
geschnie(b)en<-schnei(b)en, geschalten<-schalten, gestriffen<-streifen,
gewunken<-winken, gewunschen<-w�nschen.
- mere jokes: bemorken<-bemerken, programmoren<-programmieren
The difference is not always easy to find out. We had recently a discussion
about jocular "geschwiffene Klammern" (curly brackets; correct is "geschweifte
Klammern"), and am not sure whether this could have been an ancient form.
Likewise, I am not sure that all forms listed above as ancient were indeed in
use formerly.
--
Helmut Richter
Pat Durkin
"Helmut Richter" <hh...@web.de> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.64.10...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de...
> On Tue, 9 Feb 2010, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
>> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 07:13:42 -0800 (PST)
>> From: Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net>
>>
"Thunk" should exist somewhere independently of the "think" origin. I
hear it as exchangeable with "plunk" for an almost musical
sound--either a drum sound or the sound of a plucked string (as on a
guitar). I have heard "thunk" to describe the sound of an ax hitting
a resonating log.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Moreover, the word "thunk" (probably a derivation from "think") once
> meant a procedure fetching a parameter value for another
> procedure. The technique, called "name call",
"Call by name" in English.
> is no longer automatically provided in programming languages as it
> was in Algol 60, so the term is now obsolete.
'Tis not. I didn't start programming until '77, and so post-date
Alogol 60, but I learned and still use and read and hear[1] "thunk" to
describe a nullary function, especially a closure, passed in as a
parameter or stored as a reference and used to retrieve a value on
demand.
[1] But not, now that you mention it, from the current crop of
programmers.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There are just two rules of
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |governance in a free society: Mind
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |your own business. Keep your hands
|to yourself.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | P.J. O'Rourke
(650)857-7572
Joachim Pense
> Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:09:52 +0100 from Joachim Pense <snob@pense-
> mainz.eu>:
>> Peter Moylan (in sci.lang):
>> > Theoretically this should have meant that the archive could
>> > continue to be consulted at the Google site. In practice, all of the
>> > older articles appear to have gone lost, and even the access to newer
>> > material is patchy and unreliable. As a result, we no longer have a
>> > good Usenet archive.
>> AFAIK, they have problems with their article indexing, so the articles
>> aren't lost, only many are just not found now.
>
> And for *us*, what difference does it make. There is no practical
> difference between an article that is lost (destroyed) and an article
> that is lost (unfindable in the indexes).
The second one can be brought back (they say they are working on it). The
first can't.
--
My favourite # 46: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na_3r_bf5gA>
My favourite # 12: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5QErPDNcj4>
Joachim Pense
> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:04 +0100: Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu>: in
> sci.lang:
>>There's even a Wikipedia in Volapük.
>
> And to my surprise, it is among the 100.000+ articles languages!:
> http://wikipedia.org/
>
> 125.223 articles in Esperanto, 118.788 in Volapük. 542.966 in
> Portuguese, but is that a fair comparison, with all the freguesias
> automatically generated in from statistical sources?
>
The WP gods almost closed the Volapük WP down because they were upset that
this WP (run by a handful of people, who might not all be able to read it)
became one of the largest of the world by filling it with automatically
generated village stubs.
Joachim
--
My favourite # 36: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSEwfqs-VM>
My favourite # 56: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TalLjSUoBKw>
António Marques
Fourth, I think 'monopoly' means that the monopolist is able to dictate how
others gain access to a thing. In lay usage. (In legal usage, the thing is a
market, and just what constitutes a market has to be determined for each case.)
The only de facto vs de iure distinction I can see here is between an
informal near-monopolist and a court-declared monopolist.
Monopoly does not mean simply 'be the sole/biggest provider of', and I hate
that misuse. And Adam's original 'keeps monopoly on' is a complete abuse.
Harlan Messinger
The first definition in the OED: "The exclusive possession or control of
the trade in a commodity, product, or service; the condition of having
no competitor in one's trade or business." "Exclusive possession"
applies at the moment, despite, the fact that nothing enforces this
exclusive possession. Definition 2 fits your notion: "An exclusive
privilege conferred by a monarch, state, etc., of selling a particular
commodity or of trading with a particular region." But the first
definition can't be called a "misuse".
Jerry Friedman
> On Feb 9, 2:54 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
>
> > Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:54:21 +0000: António Marques <antonio...@sapo.pt>:
> > in sci.lang:
>
> > >French was also ousted from most of western Europe's 'first foreign
> > >language' curricula by english. Who'd have thunk?
>
> > I like that word, thunk. It doesn't exist, but could have, and it
> > sounds good.
>
> Of course it exists. You just don't see it because it isn't Standard
> English, but it's very common.
Particularly in the jocular "Who'd a thunk it?" in place of "Who'd
have thought it?" I think some might say that "Who'd have thought
it?" is an overcorrection, like saying "How do you like *those*
apples?" instead of the idiom "How do you like *them* apples?"
--
Jerry Friedman
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> writes:
>
>> Moreover, the word "thunk" (probably a derivation from "think") once
>> meant a procedure fetching a parameter value for another
>> procedure. The technique, called "name call",
>
>"Call by name" in English.
>
>> is no longer automatically provided in programming languages as it
>> was in Algol 60, so the term is now obsolete.
>
>'Tis not. I didn't start programming until '77, and so post-date
>Alogol 60, but I learned and still use and read and hear[1] "thunk" to
>describe a nullary function, especially a closure, passed in as a
>parameter or stored as a reference and used to retrieve a value on
>demand.
>
>[1] But not, now that you mention it, from the current crop of
> programmers.
I know of "thunk" as meaning 4 in the Jargon File entry:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/thunk.html
4. Microsoft and IBM have both defined, in their Intel-based
systems, a "16-bit environment" (with bletcherous[1] segment
registers and 64K address limits) and a "32-bit environment" (with
flat addressing and semi-real memory management). The two
environments can both be running on the same computer and OS (thanks
to what is called, in the Microsoft world, WOW which stands for
Windows On Windows). MS and IBM have both decided that the process
of getting from 16- to 32-bit and vice versa is called a "thunk";
for Windows 95, there is even a tool THUNK.EXE called a "thunk
compiler".
Or as Wikipedia expresses it (3rd meaning):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunk
a mapping of machine data from one system-specific form to another,
usually for compatibility reasons
Such adaptors(-ers) or convertors(-ers) were and are invisible to users
and all(?) programmers except OS programmers.
[1] http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/bletcherous.html
bletcherous: adj.
Disgusting in design or function; esthetically unappealing. This
word is seldom used of people. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" (Perhaps
the keys don't work very well, or are misplaced.) See losing, cretinous,
bagbiting, bogus, and random. The term bletcherous applies to the
esthetics of the thing so described; similarly for cretinous. By
contrast, something that is losing or bagbiting may be failing to meet
objective criteria. See also bogus and random, which have richer and
wider shades of meaning than any of the above.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
António Marques
But the first definition doesn't apply. Google doesn't have exclusive
possession in this case. If 'exclusive' has its normal meaning of 'exclusion
of others', it's false. If 'exclusive' has the weaker meaning of 'absence of
others', it hasn't 'possession' anyway, since the resources are public
domain and not Google's property. You may say it is the 'sole provider', but
that is quite different from 'exclusive possessor'.
Besides, 'my' notion is not more closely mirrored in the second definition
than it is in the first - words must be taken in context, and it's clear
that 'exclusive possession' is to be read in strong terms, not the least by
the company of 'control of the trade'. You might point to 'having no
competitor', but 'trade or business' gives yet another indication that the
words in the definition aren't to be taken in any sense they may have, but
in a certain context.
Ask yourself: what idea does 'Google has a monopooly on the Usenet archives'
convey, either to a lawyer or to the man in the street?
Harlan Messinger
As you are aware, words like "exclusive", "possess", "control", "etc.",
can cover a great deal of semantic ground. I reject the extremely narrow
and rigid definitions you seem to attribute to them.
>
> Besides, 'my' notion is not more closely mirrored in the second
> definition than it is in the first - words must be taken in context, and
> it's clear that 'exclusive possession' is to be read in strong terms,
> not the least by the company of 'control of the trade'. You might point
> to 'having no competitor', but 'trade or business' gives yet another
> indication that the words in the definition aren't to be taken in any
> sense they may have, but in a certain context.
>
> Ask yourself: what idea does 'Google has a monopooly on the Usenet
> archives' convey, either to a lawyer or to the man in the street?
To the man on the street, it conveys the idea that Google has no
competition in that arena. It does not imply that such competition can't
come to exist, or that there is any restriction on the advent of such
competition. I don't know about anywhere else, but this is the common
understanding in the United States. We use the word "monopoly", for
example, to describe the condition that federal commerce law strives to
prevent. What's being prevented, if they came to exist, would be de
facto monopolies. Otherwise, the law wouldn't have to prevent them from
forming, it would only have to refrain from creating them.
António Marques
As I thought I explained clearly just below, those words when used there
have specific meanings. (Nor does any latitude that you attribute to them
impact much on the matter anyway.) I consider your rejection to be wrong
(and wrongly grounded). But you shouldn't see this as a personal matter.
Words cover a great deal of semantic ground, yes. But that doesn't mean that
if A is defined in terms of X, Y and Z you're free to combine *any* of the
meanings of X, Y and Z to get at A's. Quite the opposite - there's a limited
set of combinations (when not just one) that yield the correct definition.
Just which to use is normally clear, though not always. I think it is clear
enough in this case. For me there is only one question: are you being obtuse
in order to defend a usage you wouldn't use yourself, or do you reaaly use
it and are genuinely convinced that you're right? (And if so, how many more
are in your situation? NB widespread misuse of a word is not enough to make
it legitimate - in this case because it's a word you only employ as jargon,
popularised or not; it is quite similar to the 'beg the question' case.)
>> Besides, 'my' notion is not more closely mirrored in the second
>> definition than it is in the first - words must be taken in context,
>> and it's clear that 'exclusive possession' is to be read in strong
>> terms, not the least by the company of 'control of the trade'. You
>> might point to 'having no competitor', but 'trade or business' gives
>> yet another indication that the words in the definition aren't to be
>> taken in any sense they may have, but in a certain context.
>>
>> Ask yourself: what idea does 'Google has a monopooly on the Usenet
>> archives' convey, either to a lawyer or to the man in the street?
>
> To the man on the street, it conveys the idea that Google has no
> competition in that arena. It does not imply that such competition can't
> come to exist, or that there is any restriction on the advent of such
> competition. I don't know about anywhere else, but this is the common
> understanding in the United States.
Again, that's orthogonal. In the US or not, if you use the word 'monopoly'
you're implying some ownership of a domain. Simply being the sole provider
doesn't match. If you tell the man on the street that Google has a monoply
over the Usenet archives, the man on the street will not just get the idea
that Google is the sole provider. He will get the idea that Usenet archives
are somehow tied to Google and that it there is some kind of barrier, de
iure or de facto, for anyone who would want to become a provider. You may
say it isn't so, but it is.
> We use the word "monopoly", for
> example, to describe the condition that federal commerce law strives to
> prevent. What's being prevented, if they came to exist, would be de
> facto monopolies. Otherwise, the law wouldn't have to prevent them from
> forming, it would only have to refrain from creating them.
You seem to be under the impression that I think monopolies are upheld by
legal instruments. That would seem to relate to that 2nd definition earlier
on. As I said then, 'my' notion is no more reflected in the 2nd definition
than in the first.
When you say a child has a monopoly of its mother's attention, that's still
'my' notion - it suggests control, ownership. Not merely being the sole
beneficiary.
Harlan Messinger
When used where? What meanings? The ones you assign to them?
> (Nor does any latitude that you attribute to
> them impact much on the matter anyway.) I consider your rejection to be
> wrong (and wrongly grounded). But you shouldn't see this as a personal
> matter.
>
> Words cover a great deal of semantic ground, yes. But that doesn't mean
> that if A is defined in terms of X, Y and Z you're free to combine *any*
> of the meanings of X, Y and Z to get at A's.
Neither are you.
> Quite the opposite -
> there's a limited set of combinations (when not just one) that yield the
> correct definition.
Not necessarily.
> Just which to use is normally clear, though not
> always. I think it is clear enough in this case.
Obviously not, since you and I disagree.
> For me there is only
> one question: are you being obtuse in order to defend a usage you
> wouldn't use yourself, or do you reaaly use it and are genuinely
> convinced that you're right?
The latter. I am not just doing this to get your goat. I am arguing this
because you have decreed that a usage that I understand to be common is
a "misuse", and I disagree with you on that.
> (And if so, how many more are in your
> situation? NB widespread misuse of a word is not enough to make it
> legitimate - in this case because it's a word you only employ as jargon,
> popularised or not; it is quite similar to the 'beg the question' case.)
>
>>> Besides, 'my' notion is not more closely mirrored in the second
>>> definition than it is in the first - words must be taken in context,
>>> and it's clear that 'exclusive possession' is to be read in strong
>>> terms, not the least by the company of 'control of the trade'. You
>>> might point to 'having no competitor', but 'trade or business' gives
>>> yet another indication that the words in the definition aren't to be
>>> taken in any sense they may have, but in a certain context.
>>>
>>> Ask yourself: what idea does 'Google has a monopooly on the Usenet
>>> archives' convey, either to a lawyer or to the man in the street?
>>
>> To the man on the street, it conveys the idea that Google has no
>> competition in that arena. It does not imply that such competition can't
>> come to exist, or that there is any restriction on the advent of such
>> competition. I don't know about anywhere else, but this is the common
>> understanding in the United States.
>
> Again, that's orthogonal. In the US or not, if you use the word
> 'monopoly' you're implying some ownership of a domain.
Excuse me, but you're the one who asked the question about the man on
the street, and I was replying directly to it. And obviously I disagree
with your last sentence above since I just got through contradicting it.
> Simply being the
> sole provider doesn't match. If you tell the man on the street that
> Google has a monoply over the Usenet archives, the man on the street
> will not just get the idea that Google is the sole provider.
If we limit ourselves to the person who already (a) knows what Usenet
is, (b) knows that it isn't owned by anybody, and (c) is familiar with
Google's Usenet archive, I think he will. I *understand* that you think
he won't. If we aren't limiting ourselves to such a person, then the
question is pointless, because then we're asking someone for his
judgment about something he knows nothing about.
> He will get
> the idea that Usenet archives are somehow tied to Google and that it
> there is some kind of barrier, de iure or de facto, for anyone who would
> want to become a provider. You may say it isn't so, but it is.
As I noted, the whole exercise is pointless if presented to someone who
doesn't already have the background necessary to understand the gist of
the question.
>> We use the word "monopoly", for
>> example, to describe the condition that federal commerce law strives to
>> prevent. What's being prevented, if they came to exist, would be de
>> facto monopolies. Otherwise, the law wouldn't have to prevent them from
>> forming, it would only have to refrain from creating them.
>
> You seem to be under the impression that I think monopolies are upheld
> by legal instruments. That would seem to relate to that 2nd definition
> earlier on. As I said then, 'my' notion is no more reflected in the 2nd
> definition than in the first.
>
> When you say a child has a monopoly of its mother's attention, that's
> still 'my' notion - it suggests control, ownership. Not merely being the
> sole beneficiary.
When you say control, you imply that the mother is incapable of
realizing eventually that she's neglecting something else and turning
her attention to it, and that the child therefore has eternal power over
her. Perhaps the problem is that your idea of what "control" means is
different from mine.
António Marques
Roughly.
>> (Nor does any latitude that you attribute to them impact much on the
>> matter anyway.) I consider your rejection to be wrong (and wrongly
>> grounded). But you shouldn't see this as a personal matter.
>>
>> Words cover a great deal of semantic ground, yes. But that doesn't
>> mean that if A is defined in terms of X, Y and Z you're free to
>> combine *any* of the meanings of X, Y and Z to get at A's.
>
> Neither are you.
And I don't think I'm doing that.
>> Quite the opposite - there's a limited set of combinations (when not
>> just one) that yield the correct definition.
>
> Not necessarily.
How so? Is it generally the case that there is an unlimited set of
combinations that do yield the correct definition?
>> Just which to use is normally clear, though not always. I think it is
>> clear enough in this case.
>
> Obviously not, since you and I disagree.
But I think you're not paying due attention.
>> For me there is only one question: are you being obtuse in order to
>> defend a usage you wouldn't use yourself, or do you reaaly use it and
>> are genuinely convinced that you're right?
>
> The latter. I am not just doing this to get your goat.
(I was rather more interested in knowing whether you would use it that way
yourself or not.)
> I am arguing this
> because you have decreed that a usage that I understand to be common is
> a "misuse", and I disagree with you on that.
My point of view is that most of the times you think you've seen that usage
you were in fact seeing the 'other' one.
>> (And if so, how many more are in your situation? NB widespread misuse
>> of a word is not enough to make it legitimate - in this case because
>> it's a word you only employ as jargon, popularised or not; it is quite
>> similar to the 'beg the question' case.)
>>
>>>> Besides, 'my' notion is not more closely mirrored in the second
>>>> definition than it is in the first - words must be taken in context,
>>>> and it's clear that 'exclusive possession' is to be read in strong
>>>> terms, not the least by the company of 'control of the trade'. You
>>>> might point to 'having no competitor', but 'trade or business' gives
>>>> yet another indication that the words in the definition aren't to be
>>>> taken in any sense they may have, but in a certain context.
>>>>
>>>> Ask yourself: what idea does 'Google has a monopooly on the Usenet
>>>> archives' convey, either to a lawyer or to the man in the street?
>>>
>>> To the man on the street, it conveys the idea that Google has no
>>> competition in that arena. It does not imply that such competition can't
>>> come to exist, or that there is any restriction on the advent of such
>>> competition. I don't know about anywhere else, but this is the common
>>> understanding in the United States.
>>
>> Again, that's orthogonal. In the US or not, if you use the word
>> 'monopoly' you're implying some ownership of a domain.
>
> Excuse me, but you're the one who asked the question about the man on
> the street, and I was replying directly to it. And obviously I disagree
> with your last sentence above since I just got through contradicting it.
What I'm saying is orthogonal is 'such competition can't come to exist, or
that there is any restriction on the advent of such competition' (assuming
you meant legal restriction) and it being the US or not.
>> Simply being the sole provider doesn't match. If you tell the man on
>> the street that Google has a monoply over the Usenet archives, the man
>> on the street will not just get the idea that Google is the sole
>> provider.
>
> If we limit ourselves to the person who already (a) knows what Usenet
> is, (b) knows that it isn't owned by anybody, and (c) is familiar with
> Google's Usenet archive, I think he will. I *understand* that you think
> he won't. If we aren't limiting ourselves to such a person, then the
> question is pointless, because then we're asking someone for his
> judgment about something he knows nothing about.
But we do know the target audience: people who have some, but not perfect,
knowledge of a/b/c. For those people, the question is not pointless, yet
they're likely to read from the statement something which isn't true.
>> He will get the idea that Usenet archives are somehow tied to Google
>> and that it there is some kind of barrier, de iure or de facto, for
>> anyone who would want to become a provider. You may say it isn't so,
>> but it is.
>
> As I noted, the whole exercise is pointless if presented to someone who
> doesn't already have the background necessary to understand the gist of
> the question.
>
>>> We use the word "monopoly", for
>>> example, to describe the condition that federal commerce law strives to
>>> prevent. What's being prevented, if they came to exist, would be de
>>> facto monopolies. Otherwise, the law wouldn't have to prevent them from
>>> forming, it would only have to refrain from creating them.
>>
>> You seem to be under the impression that I think monopolies are upheld
>> by legal instruments. That would seem to relate to that 2nd definition
>> earlier on. As I said then, 'my' notion is no more reflected in the
>> 2nd definition than in the first.
>>
>> When you say a child has a monopoly of its mother's attention, that's
>> still 'my' notion - it suggests control, ownership. Not merely being
>> the sole beneficiary.
>
> When you say control, you imply that the mother is incapable of
> realizing eventually that she's neglecting something else and turning
> her attention to it, and that the child therefore has eternal power over
> her. Perhaps the problem is that your idea of what "control" means is
> different from mine.
Here I mean that the child dictates how the mother dispenses her attention.
It doesn't mean it's eternal control, it doesn't mean that the mother gives
attention to nothing else. It means that, when deciding what to give
attention to, the mother thinks in terms of the child's interest. This idea
of being able to determine how access to resources is to be gained or not is
at the very heart of the notion of monopoly. Obviously, most of the times,
monopoly will imply being the only or nearly the only provider, and most of
the times being the only or nearly the only provider will imply being a
monopoly, and that's why it is easy to mix up the two ideas, and that's why
it is easy to think evidence for one is actually evidence for the other, but
the fact is that sometimes being the only or nearly the only provider does
not mean you have a monopoly, and sometimes you can have a monopoly even not
being the only or nearly the only provider. What determines whether you have
a monopoly or not is your ability to dictate the terms under which the
resource is accessed. This is an abstract definition, but it works for the
corporation the same way it works for the child.
In sum, I think I'm telling you that your usage of monopoly is wrong. I
understand how you can take exception to that, but again, what do you make
of 'begs the question'? Though here, in fact, most of the times that which
you may refer to as a monopoly is a monopoly, even if I'm right, so that's
not a big problem.
Meaning is determined by usage because it is something you infer from
people's usages around you (I think it's the second time I say this today).
But words like monopoly are not that common and those who use them
consistently and more frequently (and those are the ones who get the most
weight) do tend to use them judiciously. So, even if the general public is
tempted to misuse the word, the meaning doesn't shift. Much in the same way
that thou didn't lose its -(s)t, because the only people using it with any
regularity - almost none, of course - do take the care to employ the correct
marker.