🚀 go-pugleaf

misrael@csi.uottawa.ca (Mark Israel) writes:

>> I believe only the first:
>>
>>> "The relation between words in a language and their meanings is
>>> arbitrary";

>linguistics course that I took, the experiment was not mentioned;
>even the possibility of doing such an experiment was not mentioned;
>we were just told the above and expected to believe it.

In Sociolinguistics, An Introduction (I believe in the USA it would be
called something or other 101), our lecturer DID mention the fact that
the current belief is as above but that there are attempts to disprove
it. She did not know what the success level was, but the attempt WAS
mentioned.

>>> "Speech is more important than writing";

I suspect that the above comment is actually a corruption of the CORRECT
adage that "speech is more ancient and, even now, much more used than
writing." Whether this makes speech more important is a hard question to
answer. I suspect not.

>Did Saussure do experiments to justify this choice of methodology?
>Apparently not.

This is non-cupatory - writing is the only system we may use for analysis of
ancient systems (languages and even partial languages) and some modern
languages (depending on aspect analysed).

>>> "Unconscious processes are more important than conscious decisions";

>   In a post to sci.lang last year, Edmund Grimley-Evans wrote:  "Not
>all linguists are Chomskyites, though the great majority of North
>American linguists are.  The reason Chomskyan linguists ignore
>writing is that they are interested in instinctive linguistic
>behaviour and are worried that written language might be influenced
>by conscious thought."

That is the opinion propunded by the English Linguistics Department of the
Hebrew University. Well, good on them. I, studying in the English Lings and
General (IE) Lings, hold the reverse.

>>> "Complete specification of a language's syntax without reference
>>> to semantics is both possible and worth doing";

>   You omitted this one.  Was that an oversight?  Did you mean to
>include this among the dogmas that you disbelieve?  You're in a very
>small minority among linguists if so.

>>> "The rate of change of a language is a constant"...)
>>
>> Where did you get this from?

This is bloody nonsense. Nowhere did I hear this. Not ONE lecturr ever
spoke thus. Quite the reverse, ALL languages change, that is dogma, if
you wish. The SPEED of change is spurting, at best.

The above is a reaction NOT to Mark Israel but to the poster HE answered.
--
---MAV

Marc A. Volovic                     Fencers do it with rapid thrusts!
(marc@shum.cc.huji.ac.il)          Guess how SABRE fencers do it, eh!?