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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: Re: What makes a 2nd language hard to learn?  (Was: languages & happiness!!)
Message-ID: <elnaE687JF.2oJ@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <853605030.2652@dejanews.com> <7f67zhbihk.fsf_-_@phoenix.cs.hku.hk> <elnaE66q4w.3nG@netcom.com> <3313A5B9.8F@scruznet.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 19:59:39 GMT
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Sender: elna@netcom13.netcom.com

Mike Wright <darwin@scruznet.com> writes in a recent posting (reference <3313A5B9.8F@scruznet.com>):
>
>I can't speak for Mr. Lee, but personally I would support an IAL in
>proportion to its simplicity. The point of comparing Esperanto, or any
>other IAL, to Chinese or Vietnamese is that those particular natural
>languages show that things like number, gender, aspect, and tense can be
>made optional, to be expressed when the user feels the need, but never
>required by the form of the morphemes. This is done without any loss of
>ability to express what the user wants to say.
>
I do not understand how a system is considered simpler if it involves
more options. If the rule is "always indicate number" is this not simpler
than "marking number is optional, depending on the circumstances" followed
by a series of rules governing when & how to mark??
If the student must decide "do I use a quantifier in this phrase?" is that
not another decision, which makes the linguistic flow *more* difficult?

>But the particular features that are most often complained about
>(mandatory singular-plural with agreement between adjectives and nouns,
>and the accusative ending) are not particularly typical of agglutinative
>languages vs. inflectional languages.
>
Right. This feature is common to agglutinative and inflectional types
of grammars, but not used in isolating types. So you are (as I read it)
arguing that isolating grammar is inherently simpler than the other two
types. I do not see how showing plural-ness by means of a separate word
is simpler than showing it by an ending; nor how showing the accusative
by word-order is inherently simpler than using an ending. 

I understand that Mr. Lee might believe these claims, because his first
language has an isolating structure and fixed word-order, so it might 
seem more "natural" to him and other Chinese-speakers to adopt these--
rendering his parallel arguments a subset of "that is simplest which is 
most similar to my native language".  But for you, Mr. Wright, I believe
that you have learned Chinese in school, with English as your native
language (please forgive me if I assume wrongly) so I am curious why
you seem to believe that any macro-structure of grammar is inherently
simpler than any other.

BTW the argument for Esperanto's simplicity is not that agglutinative
grammars are inherently easier than isolating or inflecting, but rather
that Esperanto's planned regularity leads to simplicity.  It is also
worth pointing out that a similar list of complaints lead  to the "Ido
schism" as early complainers (fixed-order-grammar-speakers) wanted to
throw out the -n ending in favour of the more familiar technique. 
-- 
Miko SLOPER              elna@netcom.com              USA  (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la          ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna   fax (510) 653 1468 
Centra Oficejo de la     Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A.   Write to above address or call:  1-800-ESPERANTO
