Comments | faendryl: (без темы)

faendryl

(Untitled)

Feb 17, 2006 14:19

It seems as though with more humans you ought to have more language, so they can all say something unique, but instead you get less language, on average, so they can all understand it.
EDIT: I made a typo writing this. "same" for "say". Funny.

Comments 4

Amount of language? anonymous February 17 2006, 15:20:42 UTC

In what sense "more" language, or less? More languages?
More or less complex syntax (certainly one can generate
unique utterances just by being more convoluted or going
on longer)? And where is it written that we should have
the opportunity to say something unique? Who's providing
the evidence that we have "less" language as the population
grows? Anon. (and on)

Re: Amount of language? faendryl February 18 2006, 02:49:56 UTC

More language in the admittedly quite vague sense of more ability to distinguish in meaning (similar to the mythical extent of Inuit words for types of snow). And more language in the sense of it being in common usage; words dormant in a dictionary are language to scholars only. It is my opinion that we should have the opportunity to say something unique, because I fear, distrust and detest homogeneity. I have no evidence, and if you could offer some to indicate that there is a trend proceeding in the opposite direction I would be most cheered, but at best I suspect that the "amount of language" is staying nearly fixed, and certainly not growing along with population.

Re: Amount of language? anonymous February 18 2006, 08:52:21 UTC

Ah, I see - but then language would grow in proportion to the number of things/concepts one can or wants to distinguish, and that need not be correlated with the growth of population, though I suppose the more distinguishers the greater the probability of distinctions' being made? But wide use is a problem, since new or fine distinctions are likely to be made in specialized sub-groups, as in technical or scientific vocabulary. That certainly works against homogeneity, but not for wide use. Maybe you can't have it both ways. As for evidence - I'm not competent. Have to leave that to the linguists or psycholinguists among us.

Re: Amount of language? faendryl February 19 2006, 03:29:54 UTC

I agree that you probably can't have it both ways (at least, with a large and growing population...). That's kinda what I'm griping about. In other beating-the-waves-with-a-whip news, I also have some beef with several of the tendencies that tend to be survival traits/promoted by evolution in the human race.