Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 11:06:20 -0500 From: Ronald Kephart Subject: Re: Logic, etc Sender: owner-linganth@cc.rochester.edu To: linganth@cc.rochester.edu Cc: anthro-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Reply-to: Ronald Kephart Precedence: bulk In message <199701191328.WAA12575@kayoko.niji.or.jp> writes:
>Dear Linganthers,

>Who says language is based on logic anyway?

Exactly (and nice post, by the way). People who have been misled by centuries of Western thought which demands a strict separation between biology and culture, nature and nurture. People who mistakenly assume that because language is patterned, structured, it must also be "logical." Bishop Robert Lowth, a math/logic geek, assumed this in 1762, when he declared double negatives unholy in English.

I tell my students that language is BIOlogical. It's patterned, rule-governed, structured, etc. but it ain't necessarily logical. And regarding negation, I tell them that while it's true that multiplying negatives gives you a positive, ADDing negatives just gives you a bigger negative. And I offer them the Old English:

ne bith thaer naenig aelo gebrowen mid Estum. not be there not-any beer brewed among Estonians 'There is no beer brewed among the Estonians'

This is to show them that multiple negatives have been a consistent feature of English thruout its history, and not the result of recent degeneration of the language caused by dwindling eduational standards or watching too much TV.

And, if language were logic, I wouldn't be able, in my dialect, to say "I could care less" when I mean that I don't care about something at all.

Ron Kephart
University of North Florida
Go Back to Carroll's Remarks on Logicality