language and meta-language (and this is my LAST post on this thread : hurrah !)

From: Julian Lord <jlord_at_free.fr>
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 13:35:41 +0100


Andrew :

> Me:>
> > Sorry, that's a fallacy. It's quite possible to have a language be its=
>
> > own meta-language and do valid reasoning in it.
>
> Julian:
> > This is incompatible with the definition of what a meta-language is,
> 'THE definition'? Please provide a reference to the definition you're
> using.

"language discussing language".

I won't go into detail, because that would be _seriously_ OT for this list.

> If a language can't be its own meta-langauge, what language are we using =
> in
> this discussion? I was under the impression we were using English to tal=
> k
> about what sort of things can be said in English.

Technically speaking, we're not using meta-language in this discussion at all, because it's an non-technical conversation. Some higher forms of meta-language resemble mathematical formulae, not spoken or written english/french/swahili/whatever.

Also, the actual topic of this thread involved talking in English about what certain Gloranthan languages might be like.

And this isn't the linguistics digest !!

Alex :

> > perhaps an injection of facts will assist a humane death.
>
> ... or give it a unwholesome new, zombie life --

:-(

> But surely the counter-argument to
> the monogenesists is not that unrelated languages arise spontaneously in
> speaking populations, but that it may have arisen more than once in
> _non-speaking_ populations.

(which handily disposes of all innate vs. acquired debate, I must point out)

> Julian Lord:
> > The Ur-Language is a myth.
>
> in Glorantha, we can (more or less) happily
> have an inconsistent superfluity of it, with a myth for a Proto-
> Lozenge, and for several separately-created distinct languages, all
> proveably 'correct'.

Indeedy ! :-)

> > The theory is that new languages cannot be unrelated to
> > the human linguistic faculty.
>
> Let's not over-hastily conflate two different things here,

Well, you're actually talking about three opposite sets of linguistic theories, (nominalist, vocalist, and realist if you have to know) to be more to the point. Which is very OT to this list BTW.

> > It's a bit like mathematics in this sense, except that the bases are
> > uncomfortably vague (from the hard science POV).
>
> That is itself a rather uncomfortably vague statement; maths doesn't
> have 'untestable tenets', it has (on a branch-by-branch, and indeed
> flavour-by-flavour) axioms. If one removes them, one doesn't get
> something 'anti-mathematical', one just gets a different type of
> mathematics. (Whether said maths describes anything in the RW is
> another question entirely, of course. Keep watching this space (as it
> were) for the parallel postulate...)

Sorry, I was being characteristically messy, but I do agree with you here.

Same basic ideas, different words.

> > To get to the superficial point of the objections, too, Linguistics
> > can provide no testable and therefore "scientific" model, because
> > language and meta-language (which is used to discuss language)
> > share many common features, which are impossible to analyse
> > because of their shared inherently linguistic nature.
>
> Sorry, I don't see how that applies at all. Linguistics positively
> _abounds_ with testability,

... just as it _abounds_ with *un-testability*.

> but the existence of an ur-language (in the
> Proto-World sense) is beyond the scope of same (according to most
> reckoning, at least). So if you want to be a scientific linguistic, you
> leave that out of your model; nothing else much goes wrong,

It's true that certain branches of linguistics can blithely ignore ur-language theory, but _general_ linguistics was the original tangent here ; IMO this is A Tangent Too Far ...

The bona fide scientific branches of linguistics provide analytical tools, rather than a model per se ...

> > This is incompatible with the definition of what a meta-language is,
> > I'm afraid. "Language discussing language". It implies an objectivation
> > of the target language(s), where it or they are deprived of the ability
> > to actually communicate, and are instead studied for their physical
> > qualities. the core tools used remain linguistic though, which engenders
> > a certain number of unavoidable paradoxes. However :
>
> Unless you're using meta-language in some narrower sense than I'm
> familiar with

Likely.

> (in which case, I await enlightenment (though somewhat in
> a more-in-hope state)), I see no such incompatibility. One can describe
> BNF in BNF, or French in French, without any major calamities (or at
> least beyond those of describing BNF in some other formal language, or
> French in Basque, or any other alternative that springs to mind).

Technically speaking, and for example, a graph recording of a voice pattern of statements in English belongs to the meta-language used to discuss English.

The graph itself though is not part of the English language.

Raving off-topic-ness here, and as pointed out this is definitely my last post on this increasingly tangential linguistics thread. If something pertaining to Gloranthan languages were posted, though ...

> [Goedel's Theorem]
>
> > A theorem I myself fail to accept.
>
> The incompleteness theorem proves (note, proves, hence the 'theorem'
> part; this isn't a matter of preference or opinion) that in a given
> formal system, there are certain 'true' things you won't be able to
> prove inside that system.

My personal view is that systems almost always contain mutually incompatible elements, but also that the systems are there to be transcended by the people who use them ; which is to say that I reject the premise of the 'theorem' rather than Goedel's development thereof, which is of course remarkably clear-headed ; and which also sounds a lot like Glorantha.

i.e. the 'true' elements in a system are only true until proven false, which is (as far as I can see) incompatible with the 'theorem' per se.

Must be my partially Cartesian education at work here ... ;-)

> > Mostali is doubtless its own meta-laguage ... :-)
>
> In practice, most languages are, or at least can be, beyond a certain
> threshold of complexity and expressivity.

_until_ you reach a certain threshold of complexity ...

> I'm sure Mostali is very
> precise and reductionistic when it comes to expressing knowledge about
> languages (and everything else).

Yes, but ... nothing not reductionist can be true in the mostali mind-set, so Mostali cannot not be its own meta-language ... ;-)

Julian Lord

--
__________________________________
"Hmmm, I've heard of other powers.
Can you tell me about ...

... Real Life ?"




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