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