JLSSCNC: Rating the World’s Languages →
One of the sillier ideas of modern linguistics is that one language is as good as another, that no language is clearly superior to any other. Acceptance of this ridiculous theory forces us into such positions as denying that the Deep South dialect of American English is an abomination, or refusing to condemn Russian for its preposterously high level of palatalization. Obviously, then, the canard of linguistic equality has to be abandoned by anyone wanting to be a realistic student of language; luckily, more and more linguists are abandoning it. Hence, it is now possible to begin elementary work in meaningful typological classification of languages: not typology which restricts itself to uninteresting structural description without value judgments, but typology which will allow us, ultimately, to rank all known human languages, living and dead, from best to worst. This paper details the results of a preliminary analysis along these lines.
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molodoichelovek reblogged this from tristn and added:
Fascinating. The only problem is that one falls into Platonic-inspired terms—good, superior, better. I still find it...
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tristn posted this
