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I find linguistics one of those topics that I have questions about but don't know enough to use the correct terms to find an answer. - Is there an objective met

• noobiemcfoob 10y ago
  As far as efficiency in communication, there is a metric, though I can't recall the name. There's a general idea that less information dense languages lead the speakers to talk faster (e.g. Spanish vs. English) implying that humans have a type of ideal information density regardless of how that information is packaged. /Not a linguist. Took a class once...
  • newjersey 10y ago
    Apparently, they're is a time article about it http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2091477,00.html http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2091477,0... They talk about information density: With this raw data in hand, the investigators crunched the numbers together to arrive at two critical values for each language: the average information density for each of its syllables and the average number of syllables spoken per second in ordinary speech. Vietnamese was used as a reference language for the other seven, with its syllables (which are considered by linguists to be very information-dense) given an arbitrary value of 1. For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable was, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second — and thus the slower the speech. English, with a high information density of .91, was spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, ripped along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edged past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information. Further googling got me this PDF http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/pellegrino_to%2520appear_language.pdf http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/pellegri...
• gizmo686 10y ago
  That depends on what you mean by "efficiency". The most natural understanding of the question for me would be to look at the information density of spoken language with respect to time, as was done in [1]. The linked findings looked at 7 different languages and found that all of the studied languages had about the same rate. However, the languages vary significantly in the density of information with respect to syllables, and the speed at which syllables are produced. EDIT: chart on page 7 (544) [1]https://muse.jhu.edu/article/449938/pdf https://muse.jhu.edu/article/449938/pdf
• Osmium 10y ago
  > I find linguistics one of those topics that I have questions about but don't know enough to use the correct terms to find an answer. I can't help answer your questions, unfortunately, but I agree completely that it's difficult for outsiders to even formulate the right questions. I find linguistics to be fascinating, in that language really is foundational to what it means to be human, and yet it seems like we still only understand so little about it. And linguistics is such a huge and broad field that is so complex once you scratch the surface, I feel like outsiders (like myself) just have a very poor grasp about what it's about. And that's only compounded by the fact that we all, as 'expert users' of languages on a daily basis, feel like we have some intuition or knowledge into how it works that very often turns out to be completely incorrect when studied rigorously. So we're often not even aware of just how ignorant we are. In many ways modern linguistics is such a young field too. I can only expect that we have exciting times ahead... I only wish it were taught more often in schools; I wish I'd studied it myself. As a sort of 'meta' subject, it seems like it'd be useful for young people to think more about what it means to communicate.
• kylebgorman 10y ago
  This is not a question that really would be of much interest to most working linguists, who aren't really willing to make value judgments about language any more than chemists are to talk about their favorite molecules. Constructed languages are also generally considered "mostly harmless" but not really an object of scientific inquiry. If you're interested in languages, you may want what people who study languages for a living are interested in. Or you dive into conlanging...there's probably a subreddit for that.
• yongjik 10y ago
  > Are there any attempts to create a new language using all the best features of historical languages? like how programming languages take the good features from one another? Unlike programming languages, natural languages are really, really complicated. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, one of the most comprehensive treatise on the grammar of English (and probably one of the most comprehensive work on any human language), runs 1700+ pages, and that's considering mostly just syntax. Imagine: a native English speaker keeps most of the rules explained in this book in their head. So, I believe any attempt to "create a new language using the best features" will either (1) fail, or (2) end up being accidentally successful, where the speakers of the new language will pile additional layers of complication by simply using the language in the same way we use any human language. IANAL, so read it with a grain of salt.
• snailletters 10y ago
  I was introduced[1] to Lojban[2] by a friend through my shallow interest in programming. I don't know much about it, but maybe it comes close to providing an answer to your 'new language' question. Their website[3] provides links to learn about it's architecture. 1. https://youtu.be/QdlGxgKt7nc https://youtu.be/QdlGxgKt7nc 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban 2. https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban https://mw.lojban.org/papri/Lojban Edit: updated video link