Language

[Greg the Grouper]

Okay. I think it's reasonable to assume that conversations on this forum tend to be more technical, rather than colloquial. Also, I guess this was a really short-lived topic.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Interesting, what makes you assume that?

 

[Greg the Grouper]

Precedent, the other users here, etc. If you look at any of the archived debates (assuming they've been carried over from leagueofreason.co.uk), a single post often leans very heavily into technical language, long explanations, and multiple cited sources. To be honest, our discussion might've been better suited for general discussion.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Yeah, seems like it so far, though I am not through much stuff yet.
The people seem smart and educated .. except that one guy I had to put on ignore already.

Btw. I am an idiot, so ... talk slowly.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Sorry, I replied in the other thread prior to seeing this one.

The notion that dictionaries are prescriptive is predicated further on the notion that words have intrinsic meaning. A quick perusal of any dictionary's entry for the word 'set' should swiftly disabuse you of that notion, and that's just the most obvious example (because it has the highest number of discrete definitions of any word in the language).

Words cannot have intrinsic meaning, or we couldn't have new words, and the reams of semantic discussion in philosophical tracts would be an exercise in futility.

More on this here:

The Map Is Not The Terrain: The Pitfalls of Language

What's in a name? Rather more than we might think, actually. Words have baggage, and sometimes that baggage can be difficult to shake off....

www.hackenslash.co.uk

 

[Deleted member 619]

Problem is, that we can not hold a proper conversation with people of all backgrounds internationally like that psikhrangkur, also that, at times, a referee is needed ... and thats kinda the dictionary, isnt it?

No, aall that's required is agreement, which only requires that we agree that, when I use a word, you understand what I mean, and vice versa. This is why works on technical subjects include glossaries, so that you can determine what the author means when he uses words that don't have a fully technical definition previously agreed on.

Even in technical discussion, definitions aren't actually prescriptive, they're just conventions, to avoid all that tedious semantic discussion in every publication.

And to be honest, the english language is small and cute, not the most useful to illustrate complex matters ... we would all have to learn German(They actually got a tense for something you maybe planned to do in the future 20 years ago, if you traveled to the past) if you wanna go hardcore.

[/QUOTE]
This is exactly backwards. English is much larger and massively more useful to illustrate complex matters, which is why it's the natural language of choice for technical work. For those areas in which English isn't sufficiently robust, we use the fully technical language of mathematics (even for those areas dealing with plain language propositions.

Sides, gotta face it, you or me .. we aint no Shakespheare, lingustic experts or foremost experts in our field. We simply do not get to argue language outside of philosophy. I ll apologize if, by chance, anyone here actually is though.

There are those of us with considerable expertise in English, and I absolutely promise I have more expertise in English than did Shakespeare, and my expertise in philosophy of language leaves him in the dust, largely because I have the intervening 400 years of progress in these areas of thought that he didn't have access to.

Addendum: Sides, the smart way to explain things, is in a way that everyone understands.

Agreed, and understanding comes through clarity. Poor definitions, especially in technical subjects, muddy the waters. The discussion that spurred this was a discussion on a technical subject. The definition for macroevolution you gave was poor for that precise reason, because it reduces to 'macro is just lots of micro', which is misleadingly incorrect. People go away with the impression that macroevolutionary processes take a long time and can't be observed when, in fact, macroevolution is much more subtle than that.

It's certainly possible to distil technical topics down to lay language and, in fact, I do it all the time, but one of the worst things you can do in any sort of didactic setting is to oversimplify, and that's almost uniformly what poor definitions do.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

The problem with dictionaries is the same as with versions of the bible: which one do you go with? OED, Merriam-Webster, Chambers, etc.

At best, they are a guide to general usage of a language - if you want anything more specific, you need a more specialised dictionary, for example, a science dictionary. Or even a more specialised one. such as a subject-specific dictionary (medical, etc.).

By the way, what is your first language, if you don't mind me asking?

And "sides" should actually be "'sides", as the apostrophe indicates the dropped letters, "be".

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 619]

Or even a more specialised one. such as a subject-specific dictionary (medical, etc.).

Or an even more specialised on, such as the glossary in a philosophical tract...

 

[Deleted member 619]

It's worth noting that ALL aspects of language are conventions. There cannot be anything prescriptive about language, because that's to give it objectivity it can't possess.

Words are models we have in our heads. Any time spent in discussion with anybody beyond purely milquetoast language will reveal easily that the models we each carry are different, and that's a huge number of variables, which engenders ambiguity. In fact, I'd posit that 'look it up in a dictionary' is the ultimate progenitor of the 'google it yourself' fallacy.

Definitions and semantic discussion allow us to agree on conventions, and dictionaries record the most common of those conventions, but conventions is what they are, or we'd still be describing oats as things that, in Scotland, support the people.

In 21st's defence, it's not immediately obvious that the convention on this forum is to lean to rigour as much as possible, nor that that's the 'reason' that the name of the forum alludes to. This convention has a long and storied history hereabouts, and in the history that preceded the foundation of the forum, because of how it initially began, as a response to some of the discursive tactics that particular science-denying types were engaging in. Any ambiguity was a crack into which they could wedge their dreck, so we tend to the technical to remove ambiguity.

I'd also add that the title at the head of the thread isn't necessarily prescriptive on the discussion, either. Topics can morph, though they'll tend to stay at least close to the central topic. In the case of the thread in which the discussion on dictionaries came up, the thread had fulfilled its initial purpose and had morphed into a discussion about thoughts and beliefs. To the extent that technical topics come up here, though, we do tend toward terms as they appear in the primary scientific literature because, again, it removes ambiguity. There's no barrier to having further discussion on the terms in the definition, but that discussion is a better shortcut to understanding that oversimplifying is.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Words are models we have in our heads. Any time spent in discussion with anybody beyond purely milquetoast language will reveal easily that the models we each carry are different, and that's a huge number of variables, which engenders ambiguity. In fact, I'd posit that 'look it up in a dictionary' is the ultimate progenitor of the 'google it yourself' fallacy.

I do a class on this in a course on symbolic behavior in archaic humans. To make it fun, I start with a game for the students to play. First I ask them to draw a chair, then we look at how specific details are shared across all the class' pictures of chairs, while other aspects can vary wildly yet readily be perceived as a chair. I then show a slide full of pictures of a chair and we work out the 'essential' characteristics of a chair. More fun though is when we get to 'mother'. My slides for that include a wizened old lady with no teeth or hair, and a voluptuous porn star in lingerie - fact is that both could be a mother, because the only empirical thing one really needs is a working female reproductive system, but few people are going to associate old age or sexiness with the concept of mother. Our relationship with language is very weird; we seem 'hard-wired' to learn language, but it really doesn't matter what software you upload, except then that software then maintains and restrains our perception of the world around us more than any of us can ever understand.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

... and frankly Shakespeare would be entirely out of his depth in the modern world linguistically.

I fart in your general direction.

 

[Led Zeppelin]

@hackenslash @21st Demon Lord

I figured it might be better to move the language bit, hopefully this is a good spot for it.

I have to ask, though: Demon, when a new edition of a dictionary has an altered definition for a word, is it your opinion that the authors of said dictionary have declared to the world at large that, henceforth, this word will mean this thing?

I always thought dictionaries were based on surveys taken that ask people to describe what a certain word means to them. Is this correct?

 

[Deleted member 619]

I always thought dictionaries were based on surveys taken that ask people to describe what a certain word means to them. Is this correct?

No. Words are researched by teams of researchers trawling (mostly) print publication, although of course the tendency is toward digital publications as the net continues to take over. When a word comes into popular use, the tendency is to go and find the earliest printed source and start there.

I do recall a TV show with Victoria Coren some years ago in which the OED recruited public assistance in tracking down the sources of some words, but none of it, to my knowledge, is done by general survey. I once dated a researcher for the OED.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

They actually do surveys for "youth speak".
But that doesnt qualify as language.

 

[Deleted member 619]

But that doesnt qualify as language.

See, every time I start to think maybe I was too harsh, you go and say something as utterly fucking stupid as this.

Holy fuck. Do you actually think about the things you say?

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Gucci! You are fire bae. Dont be salty and gimme the tea! YOLO.

Yeah no ... I do not accept that as language. As a matter of personal preference.
This one especially I will fight to the death "Periodt - End of statement emphasizer. For example: “That’s the best ice cream, periodt.”"
And yes, I am aware of the irony, considering the amount of typos I make.

Teen Slang Words Every Parent Should Know

Explore the most popular words teenagers are using and learn how to translate and keep up with the ever-changing vocabulary of teen slang.

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[Deleted member 619]

Whether you recognise it as language has no bearing on the fact that it fulfils all the necessary and sufficient criteria to be a language. It's a stupid position.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

I piss off one of my DnD buddies all the time by telling him that 'curmudgeon' and 'brobdingnagian' are words. Always a good time.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Not just words, but excellent words.

I've been known to engage in egregious sesquipedalianism at times. It's endless fun, and really stuffs the idiots up.

 

[Greg the Grouper]

That's a pretty fancy word, if I do say so myself. That'll piss him off good.

EDIT: This thread is now about great words and how great they are.