Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: chazwin on 28 Dec 2009 13:46 On Dec 28, 12:18 pm, António Marques <antonio...(a)sapo.pt> wrote: > chazwin wrote (28-12-2009 10:36): > > > The question then is; does the French Academy have the right to > > standardise the language? > > For all my often expressed dislike of it, the AF doesn't have a fourth of > the pretensions you attribute to it. I don't think you have heard me attribute ANY pretensions to it.
From: chazwin on 28 Dec 2009 13:49 On Dec 28, 12:21 pm, António Marques <antonio...(a)sapo.pt> wrote: > chazwin wrote (28-12-2009 10:11): > > > On Dec 26, 10:10 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"<gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote: > >> It's an axiom of modern linguistics (and it has never been disproved) > >> that anything that can be said in any one language can also be said in > >> any other language -- you may need to introduce new vocabulary to cover > >> new concepts and realia (but the concepts can be explained with > >> paraphrases, just as is done in both philosophy and science), but > >> that's a trivial matter. > > > Another axiom of modern linguistics that that there never is any complete > > translation between two instances of the same statement. This is true > > even across the same language. If you copy and paste this posting to > > another forum, another person will react to it in a different way and > > take a different meaning from it. > > Then clearly that's not a question of language per se. That is a non sequitur. Just because there is no EXACT translation does not mean that NO linguistic meaning has been conveyed. Meanings can be hermeneutic, semantic and linguistic.
From: Peter T. Daniels on 28 Dec 2009 14:00 On Dec 28, 10:31 am, António Marques <antonio...(a)sapo.pt> wrote: > Peter T. Daniels wrote (28-12-2009 12:29): > > > > > > > On Dec 28, 5:01 am, "Brian M. Scott"<b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: > >> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:40:47 +1300, PaulJK > >> <paul.kr...(a)paradise.net.nz> wrote in > >> <news:hh9nbf$ejq$1(a)news.eternal-september.org> in > >> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: > >>> Peter T. Daniels wrote: > >>>> On Dec 27, 3:49 pm, "Brian M. Scott"<b.sc...(a)csuohio.edu> wrote: > >>>> Whatever you recently did to "fix" your encoding has > >>>> resulted in blank spaces where you typed funny letters. > >>> No, it's posted with Content-Type: text/plain; > >>> charset="iso-8859-1" I don't think the problem was caused > >>> by his last mod farther down the list of formats. > > >> It's almost certainly a problem with Google Groups. If > >> Peter would break down and get a decent news client, he'd > >> not have the problem. > > > Yet somehow Google Groups managed to show the letters a few minutes > > later. > > > None of the newsgroup-snobs has ever explained what's _wrong_ with > > google groups. > > I don't see that there is much wrong with GG from the POV of who doesn't use > GG (whereas Outlook has a number of bugs, after all these years, that can > disrupt other people's experience of the 'news'). The problem with GG is > that it's a pain to use, though I don't know of any web interface that > isn't, and the occasional weird behaviour - the inconsistency you mention > above being a good example.- How is it a pain to use? I go to the url for "My Groups," it shows me the list of the 5 groups I visit and whether there are any new messages since last time; I click on a group name and it gives me a list of the last 30 threads most recently posted to, with the number of new messages since last time; I click on a thread and it opens the message-tree on the left and the earliest unread message on the right. What could be a pain about that? How could some other interface do it any more simply?
From: Peter T. Daniels on 28 Dec 2009 14:03 On Dec 28, 12:32 pm, Ruud Harmsen <r...(a)rudhar.eu> wrote: > Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:20:29 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels" > <gramma...(a)verizon.net>: in sci.lang: > > >I would assume they are /'pyur@r 'fyuriy en'd(y)uriN 'friyd@m fyuw n(y) > >uw bruw/. > > If <purer> is not /pyuwr@r/ but /pyur@r/, why is <freedom> /friyd@m/ > and not /frid@m/? Because "friddum" would be a different word.
From: Peter T. Daniels on 28 Dec 2009 14:05
On Dec 28, 1:13 pm, Marvin the Martian <mar...(a)ontomars.org> wrote: > On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:06:43 +0800, Robert Bannister wrote: > > Marvin the Martian wrote: > >> On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:41:23 +0800, Robert Bannister wrote: > > >>> chazwin wrote: > > >>>> All thinking is language dependant. > >>> I have serious doubts about that unless you think that thinking you're > >>> hungry isn't thinking. > > >> It is a Chomsky thing. > > >> The rebuttal to Chomsky's assertion that thinking is language dependent > >> is simple: Observe how a chimpanzee has an ability to reason that is > >> not too far behind the average human; problem solving and primitive > >> tool use. Since chimps have no language, how is it that they think? > >> Ergo, not >all< thinking is language dependent. > > >> Q.E.D. > > > Except that chimpanzees and some other apes have been successfully > > taught sign language, so I'm not sure that "have no language" is quite > > true. I doubt that most of us think verbally except when we are > > composing sentences in our heads. > > That doesn't follow because apes that don't have language still use > primitive tools and show problem solving skills. They don't NEED language > to think, even if they can acquire language from humans. > > BTW, the acquisition of language by apes shows the impact that an > intelligent influence can have on the less intelligent.- What ape has "acquired language"? |