ruminations on bangu, place structures, and corners

[Edmund Grimley-Evans <cbmvax!uunet!RZ.UNI-SB.DE!dfkihueg>]

> Most English (and probably other language) usages of the form "language
> of _____" where "_____" indicates either individuals or a group, are
> referring to the native speakers.  If this is primary, though, then we
> restrict bangu only to natural languages, and Lojban is not a bangu, and
> Esperanto is one only to the extent that there are a couple of native
> speakers.

There are many hundreds of native speakers of Esperanto, possibly
thousands.

> One also has to deal with the question of the importance of 'speaking':
> does a mute person who uses 'Signed English' (as opposed to ASL) belong
> to le se bangu be la gliban?  How about someone who merely reads and
> writes a language, possibly fluently, but does not speak it?  (A lot of
> Lojbanists are likely to become active members of a written Lojban
> community long before they become speakers of any degree of fluency, and
> I presume that many or even most Esperantists may be members of the
> written language community without being part of the speaking
> "community" such as there is one.)

In the case of a language whose written form is rather different from
the spoken form (e.g. Arabic, Chinese dialects), this is a sensible
question. In the case of a language with (basically) phonemic writing
(e.g.  Esperanto, Lojban), it seems somewhat unnecessary to make any
distinction between written and spoken use.

> The only I cannot seem to paraphrase simply is meaning 2. But if le se
> bangu only refers to native speakers, then Lojban isn't a language of
> any kind.  Some linguists indeed feel this to be the case - that a
> language must have native speakers to be a language (others require an
> active native-speaking community using it as their primary tongue, and
> hence exclude Esperanto even with its few native speakers).

Which linguists? (I would like to know so that I can avoid buying any
books they might have written!)

This totemisation of "native speakers" sounds like nineteenth-century
mysticism, not like twentieth-century linguistics.

By the way: Would anyone like to try giving a definition of "native
language" or of "primary language" that doesn't break down immediately
when applied to anyone who is even slightly bilingual?