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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: The whole language tree thing.
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Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 02:26:41 GMT
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In article <AC7F8164966813F9B@yarn.demon.co.uk>,
Paul Talacko <taka@yarn.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>Indeed it might be an interesting exercise to categorise langauge according
>to current structure rather than on an historical basis.

What a clever idea!  You could call the discipline "linguistic typology."  
Catchy, eh?

>It has always
>troubled me that languages such as French and English which are supposed to
>be from completely different branches of the IE tree are so damn similar. 
>Whereas German which is supposedly from the same branch of IE is quite
>different.

And it always bugged me that Chinese was segregated off in some completely
different family.  Analytic languages unite!

>Try an experiment by translating from French and German into English. 
>Provided you are fluent in French the translation is quite easy.  German is
>a different kettle of fish.  German is rendered directly into English gives
>sentences which are completely long and tortured.  To render German into
>English requires a complete reshuffling of sentences, whereas French by
>comparison is a push-over.

Qu'est-ce que vous avez dit?  	What is this that you have said?
Was haben Sie gesagt?      	What have you said?       

>I know no one still believes me, but take this example:
>Die Parteien legen mir die diesem Notariatsakt beigeheftete, aus einem
>halben bogen bestehende, von ihnen errichtete Privatkunde, de dato Wien,
>den 3. August 1995 zum Zwecke der notariellen Bekraeftigung vor.
>
>You will never get a French sentence like that.

You will never hear a German speak like that either.  I think you are
putting style (very formal written style, heavily influenced by the
ideas of post-Enlightenment grammarians) before basic syntax and morpho-
logy.  Certainly, I don't think Juristendeutsch is a firm basis for 
linguistic toponomy any more than I think topiary is relevant to Linnaean 
classification.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
