I'd like to thank Miladus ad usum Delphinorum for drawing my attention to an interesting quotation, which he posted on his blog. It's from the Jesuit grammarian and rhetor, Dominique Bouhours [1634-1702].
Comme la parole est le lien de la société, et que la langue qu'une nation parle est commune à toute la nation; le public seul peut déterminer ce qui regarde la parole.
Il faut qu'un mot, pour estre receu, ait les suffrages du peuple qui doit s'en servir. Et de mesme que dans les Royaumes électifs, l'élection d'un Prince n'est point légitime, si les Estats assemblez ne le choisissent d'un commun accord; dans les Langues une diction nouvelle n'est point autorisée, si toute la société, ou du moins la plus saine partie de la société ne se déclare en sa faveur.
Dominique Bouhours. 1674, 1682 (2nd ed.). Doutes sur la langue françoise proposez a messieurs de l'Académie Françoise par un gentilhomme de province.]
So, does the French Academy represent French speakers in the same way that National Assembly represents French citizens? I don't know. My problem with academies in general is that they tend towards conservatism rather than innovation. If a majority of francophones used the term le software, how has the Academy served them by replacing this anglicism with le logiciel? Let the record show that I think the IT industry here in California should borrow the latter to replace the former. I guess a devil's advocate would compare the Academy to the W3C organization. After all it's just trying to standardize French. So why don't standards bodies upset me as much as language academies? I'm not sure, but I suppose it's because I'm not a native speaker of C++ or XML. Natural languages are also capable of taking care of themselves, but not so our brittle artificial ones.
My provisional translation:
Posted by jim at June 29, 2003 09:39 AMAs speech binds society, and the language that a nation speaks is common to all the nation; the public alone can determine what speech is.
It is necessary that a word, to be received, has the votes of the people who must make use of it. And likewise in elective kingdoms, the election of a prince is not legitimate, if the assembly does not choose him by mutual agreement; in languages a new usage is not authorized, if all the company, or at least the healthiest part of the company is not declared in its favor.
While language standardization bodies in the computer word generate their own share of politics and heat I think that the all of the stakeholders agree that standards help reduce ambiguity which is the overriding goal of computer languages.
Standardization of spoken languages seems to be
less about reducing ambiguity and more about forming cohesive national cultures.
The French pretty much invented the concept of Nationalism and the modern French nation and outlook was achieved through the suppression of a formerly vast array of regional dialects and languages.
Besides, natural languages can tolerate -- even require -- a degree of ambiguity whereas computer languages need to be far more precise. After all, the purpose of a computer language is to generate a series of instructions which implements an algorithm on a stupid machine.
It's my contention that computer "languages" are only languages in a metaphorical sense and the metaphor leads to much confusion. Almost any argument based on an analogy between computer and natural languages turns out to be bogus when you examine it closely.
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle on June 29, 2003 06:32 PMPR-- Yes, I'd have to agree with you. That's why I get nervous when linguists and others talk about the logical foundations of language or meaning. I've always felt that the Greeks developed logic by denaturing language to such a degree that they could control its use for argumentation. Most computer "languages" operate only in the imperative mood. Add this to that; store that there. At this point, though, the terminology is fixed. --jfb
Posted by: jim on June 29, 2003 07:34 PMLet me add my fervent agreement. When I was a wee math major in college just starting to think about getting into linguistics, I had the bright idea of combining the two: the math of language! Played around with it, quickly realized the two had nothing to do with each other. Language (human language, natural language) is inherently messy, illogical, irreduceable to any kind of logical or mathematical order.
Posted by: language hat on June 30, 2003 06:07 PMDoesn't bode well for Professor Chomsky's enterprise. Wonder if anybody's told him? (Guess not.)
Posted by: jim on June 30, 2003 06:13 PM>Almost any argument based on an analogy between computer and natural languages turns out to be bogus when you examine it closely
Absolutely. I think your statement can be applied to pretty much any common analogy drawn between computers and humans: electronic "brains", computer "memory", artificial "intelligence" etc.