LINGUIST List 13.3193

Thu Dec 5 2002

Disc: Roger Bacon Quote

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Mark Chamberlin, Disc: Roger Bacon

Subject: Disc: Roger Bacon

Re: LINGUIST List: 13.3192

	In addition to the broader scope of major language awarness in
Bacon's times should be added the sense that the map of nations and
the divisions of language were much less monolithic than those refered
to in this discussion. He would have most probably had an awareness
of a wide range of brogues, patois, and creoles which he might have
considered different enough in structure as to have had their own
grammars.
	
	For example, one of the complications of modern English is
that it is not only a mixture of many vocabularies but also of their
constituent grammars. It is possible to construct the same meaning
from a collection of Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Gaelic, or Cockney
isoglosses which would each be intelligible to most modern English
speakers but would also provide a comparative range of grammars. It
is also likely that some of the arguments over points of usage are
actually rooted in the mixing of grammatical constructs from mutliple
sources.
	
	But the initial premise is still in doubt. No matter how many
grammars are compared, it is still a streach to find them so similar.
Is it comparable to saying the syntax of DNA makes all life forms
similar?
	
	Mark Chamberlin
	http://www.ciiigeo.ut.ee
	malichiimail.com
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	Tartu 50412 
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