Re: [tlug] (OT) The enigma of Japan

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Brett Robson writes:
 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > >  I lived with a linguist for a couple
 > > of years, and the first thing she did was to break me of usages like
 > > "primitive language" (although in secret I still say that about Perl).
 > >   
 > 
 > Hang on, primitive means "resembling the original".

Actually, no, AIUI it means "close to the original in some process of
derivation."  This usually means simpler, less elaborated (just look
at word processors ;-).

 > Admittedly it has an alternate meaning (nuance?) of having lesser
 > functionality but I can't see how a linguist can object to a
 > language being being called primitive.

Sure, but "primitive language" is almost always used in the lesser
functionality sense.  Also, it is often the case that languages used
by people with less technology than we have are more complex
grammatically, etc, etc.  So what happens is that "primitive" in the
sense you mention is of interest only to linguistic historians and
archaeologists.  The folks who do technical stuff (phonetics, syntax,
semantics) generally find their work to be totally unrelated to
whether a language is primitive in the historical sense.