We are all modernists and beyond.

[womzilla]

In living languages, both semantics and syntax are statistical phenomena, not absolutes.

Comments

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

An excellent phrasing, which I shall now yoink for my own arguments.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

I think it would be more accurate to say "in (natural) human languages."

Syntax and semantics are not properties of language, any more than "mammal" is a property of an animal. There are these animals that have hair and (mostly) give live birth and so on, and we who observe them and make categories call them "mammals." But "mammal" isn't a property like "gives live birth," it's a way for us to classify and talk about what we've observed.

Ditto semtax and synantics. They do not exist as properties of language, but as ways for us to talk about language.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you're not right. Syntax is more like "has hair" than it is like "mammal". That is, languages have rules that independent observers can identify and verify. And I think "semantics" is more like "is alive" than it is like "has hair" or "is a mammal"....

Anyway, my point was directed at a different level: Many people understand the fact that what a word "means" is not absolute and there is no arbitrating authority. Meaning is statistical--the more people who understand a word to mean FOO but not BAR, the more it really does mean FOO and not BAR. Similarly to the grammar of a language--the more people understand and observe a particular rule/construction/constraint, the more it can be said to be part of the actual grammar of the language.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Disagree does I. Syntax, changing, comprehension still do English. Same the language remain. Statistical only syntax.

Categorizing. A bald mammal no do more still a mammal? A platypus no much do a mammal? We, characteristic, seeing, categorizing. Not reality.

Syntax not more do reality. Syntax do description reality. Observation, subject, predicate, say: "English subject-predicate." Not do more English, do decription English.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I'm really not sure of the points you're making, unless they are "expressing difficult concepts in words placed in orders that aren't within the reach of intelligible English is contrary to communication". (For all I can tell, that is your point.)

When I say that syntax is an observable phenomenon, I'm not saying that the observation that "Most English sentences are in the form subject-verb-predicate completion" is not a description of English. I'm saying that the fact that most English sentences are in that form is an observable phenomenon of English sentences. Syntax is the observable patterns of a language; the descriptions of syntax are descriptions separable from the language, but the syntax itself is part of the language.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

"Syntax is the observable patterns of a language."

I think this is near to my point. It exists as a way of describing, not so much an inherent property of the language. Syntax (I think) emerges from many utterances as something that can be observed and talked about.

Ummm. Let me be a bit more specific.

That language has syntax is inherent to the ways humans do language. The specific syntax of a language, however, is not inherent either to the way humans do language, or to the specific language -- it varies a great deal and changes over time without the identity of the language being particularly affected.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, thirty years and change ago, I knew some old Pennsylvania Dutch folk who still spoke in the "verb at the end" Plain Speech syntax (including the "thee-and-thou" semantic aspect of it), there was no doubt in my mind or theirs that we were both speaking "the same" language though our syntax was radically different. I with verbs in the middle spoke, they with verbs at the end spoke, but the same language it was. (And not a bit like Yoda did they sound.)

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I think we have reached the point of heatedly agreeing with each other. Everything you said is something I already believed to be true. I think the only quibble I have with what you said here is "That language has syntax is inherent to the ways humans do language"; I believe that's definitional. There are many forms of communication, but the ones we call "language" are distinguished from other forms by having syntax.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Oops, I meant to comment on the last paragraph separately.

I have no doubt that you and the Pennsylvania Dutch were both speaking versions of English. But it's possible that you weren't speaking the same language. If English were less flexible about word order, just that one syntactic change might have been enough to render you mutually unintelligible.