---- by JLS
-------- for the GC
--- BRIAN BARKER, in his commentary to "Implicatures in Na'vi" makes a couple of interesting remarks (more than two! -- I hate the conventional implicatum of 'couple' to mean 'two': "They are a happy couple").
i. One has to dress up, as he puts it, to speak Na'vi, but not English. This gives some advantage to English (or Na'vi) over Na'vi (or English).
ii. Na'vi is somewhere between English (very difficult) and Espearanto (very undifficult).
iii. Etc. -- Klingon.
The problem is Firth. Firth has this little volume called, "The Tongues of Men". I've been spending the last days or so at the Swimming-Pool Library and see that I own the three first editions to Firth's books: "Tongues of Men", "Speech" and other. Tongues of Men is his study of artificial languages.
----
Does Grice use 'artificial'?
He does.
He refers to 'Deutero-Esperanto' (in WoW: "Meaning Revisited"). He does not explain what it is but the thing is transparent enough. He wants to say that in Deutero-Esperanto (which Grice has invented) Grice is the authority over it.
There is the more important philosophical distinction:
-- ars natura
---- This is a hateful Roman distinction: 'natura' is meant to translate Greek "physis", as in 'the biological diversity' or 'bio-diversity' of things on earth -- what Kramer call the bio-sphere -- and beyond.
---- The Romans said, "Ars longa, vita brevis", which is even stupider: the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci died ('vita brevis') but his stupid canvas ("La Gioconda") is still overrated in that little artsy museum by the Seine.
So:
----
Did the Greeks make more sense than the Romans? We expect they did. By 'ars', they meant 'tekhne'. Everybody (except a philosopher, of course, who is a gentleman or gentle person) has a 'tekhne' -- an art. Surely you don't expect that every neighbour's son who now holds a B. A. and a M. A. is an "artist". That would be a misnomer: they know some technique or other. (It's very dramatic that a dentist is NOT an M. A. -- but a M. Dent. -- I expect).
So, the Greeks did NOT make sense: they were confused about things. This is evident if you read Plato's Cratyl. For Plato, language was essentially a 'natural' (phusei) thing. Things get meaning 'by nature', 'per naturam', 'phusei'. The opposite is 'by convention', thesei, by position, the 'lex' of the Romans. This is totally absurd when it comes to language. Plato had to posit the original 'name-positioner' (onoma-thesis) who 'gave names' to things -- as Adam will, according to the Bible (Old Testament).
The idea is that a name is, by nature, 'conventional'. What thing (to say) can be more stupid than that?
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So, while Grice speaks of 'natural languge' in his famous WoW:ii ("Logic and Conversation) (first sentence), he means 'artificial' language. English is NOT a natural language. There is NO such thing as a 'natural' language, and Grice knew it! He was a philosopher. But these things HAVE to be repeated when it's non-philosophers (especially 'scientists of lingo' or linguists doing stuff). It does not add to anything to say that language is thus 'artificial'. The whole distinction is 'artificial', or downright illegitimate, strictly.
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Etc.
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You're right. The natural versus artificial distinction is not helpful when it comes to language. Human beings make language and can change. Esperanto has long outlived its originator Zamenhof, and perpetuates itself in a similar way to national and ethnic languages.
ReplyDeleteWell, Bill, we have to be careful here!
ReplyDeleteI hope you are related to that other Chapman, S. R., of "Grice" fame! She dedicates her book, let me check, to: Raymond Chapman -- which sounds very English (S. R.'s mother is 'Patricia', which sounds, rather, Irish). (She, S. R., now lives in Liverpool) -- Oddly, "Chapman" is Kauffman in German, and cfr. "Chapman's Homer". While Grice does not quote from S. R. Chapman, he does from Chapman's Homer when he quotes the 'peak in Darien' in WoW:361).
Anyway, end of 'interlude'. Back to business:
'the natural-artificial' distinction. How helpful can it be? The passage I love to quote by Grice at this stage is his cursory rejection of Hobbes and the rest of all English and Graeco-Roman philosophy that matters, when he writes (Grice does) words to the effect: "My use of words is better than others". He is objecting to the use of 'artificial' thus:
"(My) distinction between natural and non-natural" ... "is, I think, what people [or PEOPLE, as I prefer, i.e. with some derogatory intonation to it] are getting at [you see this paper was never meant to be published -- such informalisms verge on the rude] "when they display an interest in 'natural' versus 'conventional' signs."
While I see he does use 'conventional' rather than 'artificial', I think the distinction, as far as, I think, Hobbes, 'Computatio sive Logica' is concerned is between 'natural' and 'artificial', rather than 'conventional' signs.
But Grice wants to say that 'some things which can meanNN something are, some of them, NOT conventional [i.e. read: 'artificial'] "in any ordinary sense" -- ('e.g. certain gestures').
So Grice is saying that if we say, to use a hateful example, "a horse says nay", 'nay' is onomatopoetic. I.e. "The horse's nay was pleasant to hear". "Nay" is an 'artificial' way, or 'conventional' way to refer to the horse emitted by the (mouth of the) horse. I will consider Chapman's other cases separately, I hope. Etc.
(I mark the 'Irishness' of S. R. Chapman because surely you'll find it somewhat very Irish that a name that stars with "S" (her first name is "Siobhan" is pronounced, I think, 'sh-'? -- cfr. "Deirdre"). Plus, she does live in the Liverpudlian area, which is part of Ireland, right? :)
Oddly, my first fellow pianist, V. Mola, was born in Liverpool, but of Italian parentage. We call "Scouse", affectionately -- even if she can't even simulate the accent if she tried. (She has not). Etc.