Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang

["Kent Karlsson" <[e-mail]>]

Maybe, just maybe, in hindsight, it would have been better to either
 
a) reclassify some language codes to be collection codes ('ar', 'zh', ...), or
 
b) retarget some language codes to the "dominant language" (in some sense)
    like 'ar' to stand for just standard Arabic (a similar change has been
    accepted for LTRU re. 'fy'), even though that could be seen as a narrowing,
    but better seen as a clarification (in view of stability requirements);
 
or a mix of these these, rather than to invent the new concept of macrolanguage.
In the current situation, it seems best to in practice regard macrolanguage
codes as collection codes.
 
        /kent k


  _____  

From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Peter Constable
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 3:03 AM
To: LTRU Working Group
Subject: Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang



> Moreover, from what I understand from Peter, #1 is low…

 

I’d be happier if people did not attribute such general claims to me.

 

When initially published, ISO 639-3 encoded categories that were already encoded in ISO 639-2, that were catalogued in Ethnologue 15, or that were catalogued by LinguistList as supplemental to Ethnologue 15. Those sources deem each individual language to be distinct languages, by some definition – typically based on evidence of mutual non-intelligibility, though sometimes also considering other factors. All that I added was to attempt to make sense of the cases in which the denotation of categories in ISO 639-2 were not clear, or in which it appeared that they did not align in terms of granularity with categories in the Ethnologue or Linguist List catalogues, the latter leading to instances of macrolanguage.

 

So, claims about inter-intelligibility between varieties go back to those sources, not to me; and while the prototypical pairing of individual languages would be assumed by those sources to be mutually non-intelligible, that is not necessarily the assumption made in every case.

 

 

Peter

 

 

 

From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 4:40 PM
To: John Cowan
Cc: LTRU Working Group
Subject: Re: [Ltru] my technical position on extlang

 

 

On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 3:54 PM, John Cowan <[e-mail]> wrote:

Mark Davis scripsit:

>    1. "get me languages that are mutually intelligible with X" (maybe
>    to degree Y), and
>    2. "get me the languages that have the same macrolanguage as X"

>
> Number 1 is very interesting, and would be very useful; but it is
> not at all the same as #2. If macrolanguage were defined as #1, I
> would probably be all in favor of baking it into extlangs. But is
> not at all the same, as many, many examples illustrate. Moreover,
> "mutual intelligibility" differs whether the content is written or
> spoken - forcing it to be baked into the syntax does not allow for
> that difference.

This is as much as to say, Because we can't have everything, let us
have nothing.  To which I reply, The best is the enemy of the good.


This is a key issue.

If you are claiming that "sharing macrolanguages" are a good or at least reasonable proxy for "mutually comprehensible", then we'd really need some figures. Especially since where the languages are not mutually comprehensible it will cause problems.

1.	What percentage of languages sharing macrolanguages are mutually comprehensible? 

2.	How many other languages that don't share macrolanguages are mutually comprehensible? 

Both of these can have different figures for written vs spoken.

If you don't have the data for this, you have NO justification to say that we'd be better off with extlang. Moreover, from what I understand from Peter, #1 is low, which is very bad.

 

-- 
Mark 

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