this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Linguistics
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I think this is a great take. And it has a nice implication against language purism:
If compositionality demands the gen of new elements, Language* demands compositionality, and any language* requires Language, then any language requires the gen of new elements. And yet purism is all about not using new elements - no neologisms, no borrowings, just take the language vocab "as is" and deal with it.
In other words, applying purism to a language means to not use said language. Language purists are thus fighting against the very thing they claim to defend.
*capital ⟨L⟩ for the human faculty; minuscule ⟨l⟩ for specific usages of it (like Arabic, Breton, Cherokee, etc.)
Back on non-human primates: I mentioned this in another thread, but IMO "we" (people in general) should stop seeing "is this language?" as a binary matter, and more like a gradient: "how close is this to language?". What they're doing is still not on the same level as we do, but it's already beyond non-linguistic communication.
Hmm, purism can take many shapes, it's not a strictly formulated stance (even though it might act like it is "scientific" because it minds etymology). It doesn't have to be negative towards neologisms, in fact it can be very positive towards them if they're based on native material and are meant to replace loanwords.
Fair point on the attitude changing towards neologisms.
Well, it was just a cheeky thought anyway.