Science Memes

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Linguistic Perscriptivists (mander.xyz)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Yes and no but mostly no. Prescriptivists are are great when you need to build a general structure of a language, but language can and will evolve without any intelligent design by the people using it.

The primary purpose of language is to communicate ideas and most of the times the linguistic rules are not necessary to convey an idea.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Isn't the primary purpose of languge to think?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We used to believe it's true, but it has come under question. In fact just recently there was a paper that concluded language is more a tool for communication than thought.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I'll check it (and try to understand it). I was thought that in my philosophy class.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Internal inconsistencies fester and degrade a language if the changes people like you defend are not only left unshamed, but even encouraged as "creative".

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There are language that have lived for centuries without any lexical rules. Any value lost is only in the the eyes of the preceptivists. Language can and will easily live on with all the internal inconsistencies. In fact language rules are usually built around those inconsistencies because the language people speak is more important than whatever rules purists come up with.