Author Topic: Linguistically Complete (Read 6115 times)

John the Saxecutioner · « **on:** January 04, 2005, 01:28:23 PM »

My sister-in-law is really into sign language right now, so I was doing some reading about it over the holidays. One web site I found (this one) says that American Sign Language "is a linguistically complete, natural language" and "should not be considered in any way to be a broken, mimed, or gestural form of English." I get the second assertion, especially since considering it a broken form of English is probably pretty offensive to deaf people. But I'm wondering what it takes to be a "linguistically complete" language. One thing that I found odd about ASL is that it doesn't seem to use the verb "to be." I've never heard of another language that doesn't have some form of "to be."

Porter · « **Reply #1 on:** January 04, 2005, 01:49:07 PM »

I've heard of other languages without "to be", but I can't recall which ones.

Jonathon · « **Reply #2 on:** January 04, 2005, 02:18:41 PM »

There are actually lots of languages without a word like "to be." I don't know how common they are, though, and I don't know any offhand.

I'd guess that by "linguistically complete," they mean it has a full vocabulary (instead of a specialized or limited vocabulary, like a code language), syntax, and semantics. A true pidgin language (which is really only a handful of vocabulary and semantics, but no syntax) is not linguistically complete.

Annie Subjunctive · « **Reply #3 on:** January 04, 2005, 03:33:56 PM »

I don't know enough to answer that, but on a related note:

A friend of mine is a sign language translator, and she was telling me about the newest thing she's been learning, which is called cueing. (how do you spell the present participle of "to cue" anyway?) In this method, the signs are all small and near the face and it's a direct transliteration of what's being spoken. Cueing reproduces the sounds of spoken English and even reproduces ambient sounds (such as a cough or an onomatopaea) and so deaf people process it the same way they process written English. It made me realize that the deaf who speak ASL are for all intents and purposes bilingual. Pretty interesting.

Jonathon · « **Reply #4 on:** January 04, 2005, 03:37:14 PM »

"Cuing" or "cueing." I think I like it better with the e, because then it's clearer that it's two syllables.

beverly · « **Reply #5 on:** January 04, 2005, 07:16:29 PM »

Tagalog also doesn't have a "to be" verb. Just FYI

Of course, Porter mocks it as not being a "real language" either....

Edit: I think it is "linguistically complete" in the sense that it has complex enough grammer to effectively communicate as does any other true human language. ASL being guesture-based has many advantages over spoken language. For instance, nearly all verbs can be given direction. You can tell by the direction of the movement who is doing what to whom.

Trisha · « **Reply #6 on:** January 04, 2005, 10:17:24 PM »

Um, yeah. Sign being a complete language is one of the tenets you must swear to for acceptance into the secret brotherhood of linguists. Oops. I had a roommate in college who served a mission to the deaf and we talked about it a lot.

So when we are talking of a pidgin, this means a language learned by an adult to get along just as well as they need to with another population that speaks a different language. Then creolization generally occurs with the next generation, and describes the languages of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I suppose this may have been an issue Card had to address books 5 and 6 of the Alvin Maker series. Rien would have been a pidgin speaker while Marie would have been more of a creole speaker. I have no idea whether he got it right.

It also explains the manner in which Black English, while seemingling grammatically poor, is actually linguistically complete. There are grammatical rules to the ways in which it diverges from "standard" English. While I recognize this, I don't think it helps kids to conduct their education in that language with the possible exception of learning math.

I think Sign is essentially a creolization as well. It began as a translation of whatever language, but whenever kids learn a language their brains fill in grammatical elements that were missing if the language being taught them is not "linguistically complete". At least, this is what they were teaching when I was in college.

Some deafness occurs along with other mental disabilities, which is why deaf people are so sensitive about the issue.

Porter · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2005, 05:47:47 AM »

I don't think I ever mock Tagalog as not being a "real" language.

But maybe I'm wrong.

beverly · « **Reply #8 on:** January 05, 2005, 08:01:57 AM »

Quote

Um, yeah. Sign being a complete language is one of the tenets you must swear to for acceptance into the secret brotherhood of linguists.

:devil:

I find that far more funny than I ought to. Probably has something to do with also having an education in language.

Trisha, everything you've said there agrees with what they taught me in college.

Kama · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2005, 07:18:02 AM »

Well, we haven't asked an actual Russian person about this, but 90% of my collegues here at work learned Russian at school, and say it doesn't have "to be".
At least in a way you'd use when saying "I am here", or "I am pretty".

Jonathon · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2005, 11:13:05 AM »

From what I understand, it does, but only for certain things. For instance, you would say something like "I here" or "I pretty," but there are other constructions where the "to be" verb is used.

Linky

Kama · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2005, 12:57:36 PM »

I PRETTY

Porter · « **Reply #12 on:** January 06, 2005, 01:01:33 PM »

Uchiha Itachi · « **Reply #13 on:** January 06, 2005, 07:18:48 PM »

But isn't that all that lacking a verb for "to be" means? If it means that there is no verb for "to exist", then how could the language possibly be "complete" in any meaningful sense?

Porter · « **Reply #14 on:** January 06, 2005, 07:28:37 PM »

I don't know these languages, but let me guess:

While there isn't any "to be", there is a "to exist". But that doesn't mean the same thing. You wouldn't say "I exist pretty".

As shown with the "I Pretty" example, you can communicate things just fine without "to be". It's just not needed in some languages.

Jonathon · « **Reply #15 on:** January 06, 2005, 07:34:42 PM »

But "to be" doesn't just mean "to exist." And anyway, just because a language doesn't have something that we find meaningful doesn't mean it's not complete. Some languages don't distinguish between "he" and "she." Some languages only distinguish between two or three colors. Some languages don't inflect nouns for number. None of this makes them incomplete.

Porter · « **Reply #16 on:** January 06, 2005, 07:56:20 PM »

Exactly. They can still express the same ideas, but you have to do it in different ways.

It's like wondering how English can be linguistically complete because we don't distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first person plural.

Trisha · « **Reply #17 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:11:37 PM »

Arabic just combines the to be with a pronoun. How often do you need a pronoun without a "be" verb?

Porter · « **Reply #18 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:13:29 PM »

It not needed.

Jonathon · « **Reply #19 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:22:15 PM »

Quote

Arabic just combines the to be with a pronoun. How often do you need a pronoun without a "be" verb?

Quite often, especially if you're not limiting it to personal pronouns.

Porter · « **Reply #20 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:34:51 PM »

I don't see it. Please give me examples.

Jonathon · « **Reply #21 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:41:53 PM »

"I don't see it."

Two pronouns, no "to be" verb.

Porter · « **Reply #22 on:** January 06, 2005, 08:46:34 PM »

I mis-read Trisha's post. My mistake.

Trisha · « **Reply #23 on:** January 07, 2005, 06:18:42 AM »

Well, I forget why it is but for some reason the Arabic situation isn't just that there isn't a "to be" verb. It's that the pronoun word for third person singular means more than just a pronoun. The first person pronoun is marked for gender. Everything is marked for gender.

Maybe it's that the pronoun is used even if the noun is already in the sentence. Perhaps something like:

Methuselah he mighty old.

Uchiha Itachi · « **Reply #24 on:** January 08, 2005, 02:24:00 AM »

Well, I don't see why anyone would even blink at the lack of a word for "to be" except that it implies that the language lacks a word meaning "to exist".

After all, "to exist" is the only substantive meaning of "to be" used as a verb by itself. All the other meanings of "to be" are actually supplied by other words, in those cases "to be" is mainly serving as an odd grammatical stop-gap so that we can say that something is described by some adjective or that the action was performed on the grammatical subject rather than by it, or that it took place at some prior point in time, or so forth.

Saying that another language has no equivalent to "to be" in these senses is about a meaningful as saying that it has no exact equivalent to "second", a word that both means the instance coming immediately after the first and means a period of time sufficient for an object to fall 16 feet after being dropped from a position of rest. In some languages, you have a word that carries both these meanings, but in many, you don't.