What IS natural?

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
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Frislander
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Frislander »

Oh boy, where do we even start?
DV82LECM wrote:that there are languages still in existence which possess epically large inventories that appear to be somewhat ancient in their development
This means nothing: all language are approximately the same age, with the possible exception of creoles and mixed languages.
migrations have taken toll on these inventories and have "Hawaiianized" (decreased) the number of sounds, with a small amount of exceptions


"Small amount of exceptions"? Mate, Proto-Bantu is reconstructed with 11 consonants. Compare that with pretty much any modern Bantu language and you see that they haveexpanded that inventory, in many cases to an extreme degree.

Similarly, with Indo-European, there is no such correlation of migration with inventory size (the relatively peripheral Germanic languages have massive vowel inventories, while the equally peripheral Aryan languages have massive consonant inventories, which have been expanded on since PIE). With Turkic and Na-Dene long-distance migration is not accompanied by phonological change of any kind.

The only language family where this even appears to be a trend is Austronesian, and even then only in Polynesian, where it can probably best been seen as a general family-internal trend towards inventory simplification, rather than as some general principle.
In these exceptions, there appears to have been what I imagine was a bunching up of people to have collected, almost, a synthetic feel to the amount of sounds a people in the past developed. These effects appear natural. I do feel that sometime in humanity's past, speech WAS far more capably complex than we were taught and might even be today for most of the planet.
I can't understand what you're trying to say here either.
The fact that the NWC family is even remotely close to area which was where the supposed "Garden of Eden/Tower of Babel" gives some credence in my mind that our myths display a truth to human language having a common ancestor we have yet to discover -- not a proto-World, but a fact that human speech in the ancient past was, for some reason, vastly more complicated.
What are you trying to say? Are you suggesting the Caucasus as some kind of naturally-occurring Babel?
I would venture that migrations out of Africa can be marked by the splitting off of large inventories from a much larger one than before. I know that changes occur which will combine and recombine sounds with clustering, but I will always feel that there is some truth that it is as natural to assume that areas with massive phonologies were the spearheads of migrations.
It's no good "feeling" that this is a natural assumption when the science clearly disproves this. Again back to Austronesian: whichever reconstruction you subscribe to, PA did not have an inventory which was especially large or above the world average, and most of it daughters have a similar number of consonants. The same goes for Proto-Turkic and Proto-Indo-European, and for Proto-Bantu as we saw above the parent language had a consonant inventory which was way below the world average.

Basically don't try and make general sweeping statements like until you become familiar with the languages you're referring to.
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elemtilas
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by elemtilas »

GamerGeek wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:
GamerGeek wrote:
Spoiler:
elemtilas wrote:
lsd wrote:
Lambuzhao wrote:the fundamental act of language is communication
the fundamental act of conlang is con...
the fundamental act of conlang is Hello Kitty...

We're getting a bit off topic now, eh?
You think?
I think the thread should be closed: We came to a conclusion. We also came to an argument.
Veni, argumentavi, elocitti.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Lambuzhao »

elemtilas wrote:
GamerGeek wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:
GamerGeek wrote:
Spoiler:
elemtilas wrote:
lsd wrote:
Lambuzhao wrote:the fundamental act of language is communication
the fundamental act of conlang is con...
the fundamental act of conlang is Hello Kitty...

We're getting a bit off topic now, eh?
You think?
I think the thread should be closed: We came to a conclusion. We also came to an argument.
Veni, argumentavi, elocitti.
Fflatâ takam [:)]
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Lambuzhao
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Lambuzhao »

Lao Kou wrote:
Lambuzhao wrote:Preach, Brother~Auntie Kou! Preach!
The notion of my being anybody's Brother~Auntie Kou just delights me giddy. But I did not mean to preach -- I guess I was in a temper.
FASHION & SHAPE EVEN!
Who knew that Snagglepuss conlanged? [xP] Infixes, stage left!
Don't make me quote Lord Byron on you all.
At the risk of showcasing my own yawning ignorance, I don't know to what this refers.
Frislander wrote:We managed to hold a thread on the EU referendum without it going up in flames, which is something.
That really is something, in any forum. Maybe I should go back and have a look-see.
Back on point: I have never found the way you express yourself here to be ill-tempered or ill-mannered.
[+1] We love you Des! [<3]
We do.
Lambuzhao wrote:I don't know if this can be said in all sanity, but, in the infinity of possible universes, most conlangs ARE natural.
[O.O]

Somewhere and somewhen, your conlang agschully EXISTS.
[o.O]

And there may be an infinity of universal bubbles wherein and whenin your conlang has done/is doing/is about to be doing absolutely fine.
[+1] Oh Heavens, yes. I have no wish to be carted off with a diagnosis of mental illness. And I think we've touched on this before. The idea that one's lang exists here AND there, wherever there is, is simply delicious.
Sí la öçkek ílpena'u síuthta.
[:)]
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Lao Kou
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Lao Kou »

Lambuzhao wrote:Sí la öçkek ílpena'u síuthta. [:)]
Géhon!
Spoiler:
Lest there be claims of too much insider baseball going on, Lam said to me in Géarthnuns, "Thank you very much.", to which I responded, "You're welcome!"
道可道,非常道
名可名,非常名
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lsd
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by lsd »

Frislander wrote:What are you trying to say? Are you suggesting the Caucasus as some kind of naturally-occurring Babel?
An anti-babel rather... a naturally high place where languages abound...
Sumelic
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Sumelic »

Frislander wrote:Oh boy, where do we even start?
DV82LECM wrote:that there are languages still in existence which possess epically large inventories that appear to be somewhat ancient in their development
This means nothing: all language are approximately the same age, with the possible exception of creoles and mixed languages.
I find the statement arguable, but not meaningless. Consonant inventories don't necessarily change at equal rates in all languages.
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GamerGeek
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by GamerGeek »

Frislander wrote:
DV82LECM wrote:that there are languages still in existence which possess epically large inventories that appear to be somewhat ancient in their development
This means nothing: all language are approximately the same age, with the possible exception of creoles and mixed languages.
Those are still based on other languages. Like Sumelic said (approximately), you missed the point, anyways.
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Dormouse559
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Dormouse559 »

Frislander has a point. The rate of sound change may not be constant across languages, but every phonology in existence today has had thousands of years to get where it is now. So yeah, those epically large inventories are ancient, but so is every other inventory of any size; and you can't derive any insight, solely from the age of a given phonology, that doesn't also apply to almost any other language.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by Lambuzhao »

Well put, Dormouse.

It's like calling the Coelacanth or Horseshoe Crab or Ginkgo a "living fossil". Sure, they belong to aeons-old families, and have remained relatively unchanged, but that's not to say that these particular species have not undergone some evolution since when their dynasties dominated their respective florae/faunae; they are not 100% identical to their great=great-grand-brothers, -sisters and -cousins that lived millions and years ago.

Likewise with langs.
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lsd
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Re: What IS natural?

Post by lsd »

But if we leave natangs word, the conlangs are often dated from their time...
Because of their weak evolution and the mark of the mentality of their creator always sensitive, contrary to natural languages...
For myself, I run away of naturalism and everything that simulates it, and does everything to neutralize any possible evolution ... my adiction to a priori (philosophical) languages explains it in part ... and helps me to achieve it ...
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