Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2(pesnta.1.2) 9/5/84; site idsvax.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!pesnta!idsvax!steiny
From: steiny@idsvax.UUCP (Don Steiny)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.nlang
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Non-sexist language (historical)
Message-ID: <177@idsvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Jun-85 13:03:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: idsvax.177
Posted: Mon Jun 24 13:03:20 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 06:00:40 EDT
References: <379@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA>
Organization: Independent Consultant - C/UNIX, Natural Language
Lines: 47
Xref: watmath net.women:6067 net.nlang:3263

>
> Standards must be kept up, or the language will be corrupted a million
> different ways.  We need to keep words with distinct meaning distinct.
> 
>             Colin Rafferty { Math Department, Carnegie-Mellon University }

	The postion prevelent in natural-language linguistics is that
attempts at setting standards don't work and are a bit silly.  Here
is a quote from *Introduction to Language* by Fromkin and Rodman.  It 
is a good survey book on linguistics.   The example is that of the
French Academy, the organization with the longest record of failing
to maintain a "standard."

	In France, a notion of the "standard" as the only correct form of the
	language is propagated by an official academy of "scholars" who 
	determine what usages constitute the "official French language."  
	All deviation from the standard are frowned on by the academy, which 
	attempts to *legislate* what words, rules, and pronunciations 
	are to be used.  The Parisian dialect was selected as the basis 
	for this norm, at the expense of the hundreds of local village 
	dialects (called *patois*).  Many of these *patois* are actually 
	separate languages, derived from Latin (as are French, Spanish,
	and Italian).  A Frenchman from the provinces who wishes to succed
	in French society  must nearly always be bi-dialectal.   The academy, 
	acting as self-appointed guardians of the purity of French, may pull
	out their hair, rail against the language's corruption, and proclaim
	against all devaitions from the "official" standard, but they have
	not been able to prevent the standard from changing or determine how
	speakers of the standard actually do speak.  The younger members of
	the academy sometimes let new "corrupt" usage slip in, and fifty
	or a hundred years after the fact, the "official" language is
	updated to conform with the language actually used by the people.

		*Introduction to Language*
		Fromkin and Rodman, p. 258
> 
> "I may not agree with your iedas, but I will defend to the death your right
>  to speak them"
> 				-Thomas Jefferson

		Are you sure? I don't have a Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 
	here, but I remember someone on the net attributing that to Voltaire.   

pesnta!idsvax!steiny
Don Steiny - Computational Linguistics
109 Torrey Pine Terr.  Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
(408) 425-0832