zompist bboard

Historically this was indeed the thinking, yes.

The idiea of certain more 'logical' languages being more elegant should not be alien to you as a linguist. Think of the enormous prestige of Classical Arabic, which is deemed more 'logical' than the Arabic dialects.

sirdanilot wrote:Historically this was indeed the thinking, yes.

Case to the point. But since this kind of thinking was abandoned quite a while ago (although some prescriptivists still hold on to some outdated ideas), there's no reason to apply such reasoning now.


JAL

sirdanilot wrote:Of course no language is better than any other. But using a plural pronoun for plural things, and a singular pronoun for singular things seems much more logical and easy to learn (for L2 learners) to me than using a plural pronoun (their) for something singular.

Who says the pronoun is a plural pronoun. It clearly often fullfills the function of referring to plural entities, but then again, it also refers to singular ones.

sirdanilot wrote:They don't have to be, but throughout history languages that seem more logical have been regarded more. Latin and Sanskrit as the ultimate, elegant, sophisticated languages.

Or is it that languages with a certain prestige have been claimed to be more logical, and have people been willing to accept those claims because of the pre-existing prestige and fimiliarity of these languages?

So essentially you don't have any rational, fact based reasons for your original statement I understand?

Anyway, as pointed out before, the use of this pronoun for singular referents is hardly 'innovative'.

sirdanilot wrote:Of course no language is better than any other. But using a plural pronoun for plural things, and a singular pronoun for singular things seems much more logical and easy to learn (for L2 learners) to me than using a plural pronoun (their) for something singular.

Question-begging 101. If it's commonly used to refer to singular entities (which it is), then it's by definition not "a plural pronoun".

You could make the exact same argument about "jij" and you'd be just as wrong.

linguoboy wrote:You could make the exact same argument about "jij" and you'd be just as wrong.

Not really, as "jij" is singular only. Sir D's pitfall is that somehow he seems to argue from familiarity: "I'm used to strictly singular or plural pronouns, so everything else is false".


JAL

jal wrote:

linguoboy wrote:You could make the exact same argument about "jij" and you'd be just as wrong.

Not really, as "jij" is singular only. Sir D's pitfall is that somehow he seems to argue from familiarity: "I'm used to strictly singular or plural pronouns, so everything else is false".

My bad, I was thinking of je. (Dutch pronouns are so illogical; how do any of you manage to speak the language?)

linguoboy wrote:My bad, I was thinking of je. (Dutch pronouns are so illogical; how do any of you manage to speak the language?)

No, even "je" is strictly singular. Dutch pronouns are quite logical, really :).


JAL

No, "je" is also used as a plural reflexive pronoun, as in "jullie hebben je vergist".

> logical and easy
> Latin and Sanskrit

Ha ha ha…

*becomes aware that's what sirdanilot actually believes*

Oh shit.
Shit.
Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:No, "je" is also used as a plural reflexive pronoun, as in "jullie hebben je vergist".

Right, I forgot about the reflexive use. Mea culpa.


JAL

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:No, "je" is also used as a plural reflexive pronoun, as in "jullie hebben je vergist".

Yeah exactly that, reflexive. So not normally a singular pronoun.

Incidentally in my dialect you could say 'jullie eigen' instead of 'je' here. But j'n is also possible: 'judder èn j'n eihe verhist'.

@ Pole: I will admit that I know not so much about Sanskrit, but I have experienced Latin as quite logical yes. A neat case system, yes with some quirks but overall quite okay.

It is also so that inflectional languages were in the past regarded more, and agglutinative or isolate regarded lower than inflectional languges. I remember reading this somewhere but I am sorry I cannot remember the reference.

sirdanilot wrote:

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:No, "je" is also used as a plural reflexive pronoun, as in "jullie hebben je vergist".

Yeah exactly that, reflexive. So not normally a singular pronoun.

What's that supposed to mean? Being reflexive is a totally normal use for a pronoun. I daresay they get used by you this way every day.

sirdanilot wrote:It is also so that inflectional languages were in the past regarded more, and agglutinative or isolate regarded lower than inflectional languges. I remember reading this somewhere but I am sorry I cannot remember the reference.

That's because awesome Europeans spoke fusional languages (because no one cares about the Finns or the Hungarians or the Saami or the Basque or the Etruscans or...), and then there were those inferior people who spoke agglutinative and isolating languages, like the Native Americans and the Chinese. Special dispensation was made for the Sumerians, because apparently Sumerians are awesome despite speaking an agglutinative language in Asia. I don't think anyone wants to maintain that line of thought anymore.

sirdanilot wrote:They don't have to be, but throughout history languages that seem more logical have been regarded more. Latin and Sanskrit as the ultimate, elegant, sophisticated languages.

This is ridiculous. I don't think Sanskrit looks very elegant or "logical" when like half or more of the conjugations of a single verb look the same. And then, of course, Latin having like five or whatever different declensions and conjugations isn't very "logical" either. Natlangs are hardly logical, no matter where you look.

And they only look sophisticated to us because they're languages that were spoken by people who conquered a lot of things and practiced religions that are today rather major. If Carthage won the Punic Wars and thus took over Europe, we would all be fawning over the Carthaginian dialect of Phoenician or whatever as the ultimate language, instead of Latin.

In fact, if you want to talk about elegance, I think English is rather elegant. We don't have all those baroque and confusing conjugations and inflections. We mostly just string words together, nice and simple, with only minimal affixing.

In a certain sense, I find Malagasy logical, with its agglutinative morphology for example, but I realise that this is a subjective opinion.

Matrix wrote:I think English is rather elegant. We don't have all those baroque and confusing conjugations and inflections. We mostly just string words together, nice and simple, with only minimal affixing.

In that case, creoles with English as lexifier should be even more elegant! Jamaican Patois, or Tok Pisin ftw!


JAL

jal wrote:

Matrix wrote:I think English is rather elegant. We don't have all those baroque and confusing conjugations and inflections. We mostly just string words together, nice and simple, with only minimal affixing.

In that case, creoles with English as lexifier should be even more elegant! Jamaican Patois, or Tok Pisin ftw!


JAL

That made me laugh harder than it should have.

When it comes to logic and elegance, nothing can beat the English spelling.

gestaltist wrote:When it comes to logic and elegance, nothing can beat the English spelling.

Yeah, I've eaten my bread, and thought it through, although I'm tough I cough!


JAL

jal wrote:

gestaltist wrote:When it comes to logic and elegance, nothing can beat the English spelling.

Yeah, I've eaten my bread, and thought it through, although I'm tough I cough!


JAL

Well, elegant doesn't necessarily mean logical as well. English spelling is anything but logical, as we all know too well I'm sure...
Phonologically it's quite elegant - at least to my ear, but english can use nouns as verbs or adjectives and the lack of conjugation and declension, extensive borrowed lexicon, etc make it a bit too simplistic and rather lazy.
I occasionally find it easier to think in English than my own mother tongue even though about 99% of all my interactions are not in English.

I know this isn't an innovative usage, but this is bothering me. I often use the word 'veritable' in either speech or writing. I use it a lot because it is a useful and obvious word to me since I know French and Spanish. But I often encounter people who don't know this word, and dictionary.com says "Few English speakers likely know this word" using their who-knows-how-truly-valid-it-is methodology. Is this word truly that obscure? It does not strike me at all as obscure.

Viktor77 wrote:I know this isn't an innovative usage, but this is bothering me. I often use the word 'veritable' in either speech or writing. I use it a lot because it is a useful and obvious word to me since I know French and Spanish.

I knew it, but I wouldn't have been able to give you a definition (just looked it up though). Why do you need to use it often?


JAL

Yes, why not use "truly" or "true"? Unless you are trying to communicate a shade of meaning which will be obvious to the listener, the Anglo-Saxon words always have more force than the Anglo-French or Greco-Latin ones.

Because that's not a synonym. Veritable is used for something which is not literal.

finlay wrote:Because that's not a synonym. Veritable is used for something which is not literal.

Wait, what? I know that "veritable" is most often used for metaphorical emphasis, but I don't think that's part of the definition, just the pragmatics.
"True", "real", etc are quite often used non-literally as well. If I call someone "a real pig", it's unlikely to be understood that I mean they have a curly tail and walk on all fours.

Here's some OED examples of the use in question:
1862 "I tell you that Charley is a veritable eel." -not literal. But you could also use "real" or "true" or even "literally" and still have a metaphorical interpretation
1869 "They had a succession of governors who were veritable brigands." -same thing, you could call them "real brigands" and people would understand it as a metaphor

But the OED also lists multiple cases where it is used literally:
1830 "Few persons..form anything like just estimates of the veritable size of trees."
1831 "A cast of the skull of Raphael—the veritable skull dug up at Rome."

Yeah, these are from the 19th century and the OED tends to list old-fashioned meanings of words.

But looking through the Google ngram viewer and Google Books, I find:

• basically no new uses from 1971-2000 (most of the hits are in quotations or citations of older works) with a few examples that are mostly non-literal, or modifying inherently abstract words: "A veritable dynamo", "A veritable gold-mine"
• from 1926-1970, English non-specialist usage seems to mainly be modifying inherently abstract words with a meaning of "true" or "reliable": a "veritable record", a "veritable history" (there might be some influence from French here).

It seems to be pretty much archaic in English. While it does seem to be the case that contemporary usage is usually in a non-literal or abstract context, "real" or "true" also often have a non-literal meaning, so I would say they are indeed synonyms to all these uses of "veritable".

I know veritable, but I always thought it was a synonym of true or truly (or real/ly).

I think I've only ever used it in the phrase "a veritable feast", exaggerating a posh accent so it's never part of my normal/serious speech. Possibly from a half-remembered reference to a film or something, but dunno what.