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Re: [ontolog-forum] LInked Data meme revisited

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 01:55:38 -0500
Message-id: <52AAAF6A.3070803@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Ed,    (01)

I'm sorry that I used the word 'vocabulary'.  I had no intention of
defining that word in a technical sense.  I'll restate the points I
was trying to make without using it:    (02)

  1. No fixed, finite set of symbols of any kind, organized in any kind
     of language or logic, can be adequate to describe precisely a
     continuous, dynamically changing system.    (03)

  2. Human languages are remarkably flexible systems, which use and
     reuse a relatively small set of symbols to characterize an
     amazingly large amount of experience -- namely, anything that
     anybody might ever say about anything.    (04)

  3. The reason why languages are so flexible is that the symbols are
     never precisely defined.  Their meanings *must* vary in order to
     support that flexibility.    (05)

For supporting details, my position has a strong overlap with the
article by Adam Kilgarriff, "I don't believe in word senses":
http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/Publications/1997-K-CHum-believe.pdf    (06)

> English is not really unique in the linguistic impacts of invasions, etc.    (07)

That's true.  But the developments of the past 1200 years have made
English unique in having (a) the largest dictionary of any language
in the world, and (b) a structure that allows new additions from any
source to slip into the syntactic patterns of the language.    (08)

> Modern French is primarily derived from Latin, yes, but much less so
> than Spanish and Italian, precisely because France was Celtic longer
> than the others, and suffered many more Germanic invasions and even one
> somewhat successful Moorish invasion.    (09)

Yes.  But those early influences were fully assimilated by 1066, when
English was just beginning its major overhauls.    (010)

> Even so, the eventual dominance of the Langue d'Oil (Paris) over the
> Langue d'Oc (Provençal) was slow in coming and primarily a consequence
> of centering the administration in Paris.    (011)

All the Romance languages have very similar structure.  When I was
visiting Argentina, one of the people I was talking with said that
many of the Italian immigrants never learned Spanish -- their
Italian just became more Spanish-like over time.  But the German
immigrants either learned Spanish or they didn't.  A continuous
transformation was not possible.    (012)

But the impact of French caused English to lose the ability to form
new words from native roots.  Just look at the number of distinct
morphemes in that German example:    (013)

    Leben-s-ver-sicher-ung-s-ge-sell-shaft-s-an-ge-stell-t-er    (014)

In German and Anglo-Saxon, those little pieces can be combined to form
new words.  Russian and many other languages can also do that.    (015)

English lost that ability.  But as Calvin said to Hobbes, "Verbing 
weirds language":  http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25
There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that point.    (016)

> The evolution of all languages is very much tied up with the history
> of the speakers and their institutions.  We can argue about the special
> cases, but the important thing is that we agree that the history of the
> speakers does not stop, so the evolution does not stop, and for that
> reason,  no dictionary will be entirely stable for any length of time.    (017)

I agree.  But I still maintain that the French attempt to "control"
their language was a mistake.  It enables modern French speakers
to read their classical literature more easily than modern English
speakers read Shakespeare.  But it restricted the flexibility of the
French language to adapt to the future.    (018)

John    (019)

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