ruminations on bangu, place structures, and corners

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!cogsci.ed.ac.uk!iad>]

>  Date:     Mon, 18 May 1992 13:27:30 +0200
>  From: Edmund Grimley-Evans <dfkihueg@DE.UNI-SB.RZ>
>
>  > 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?
>
>  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.

"Chinese languages".  And this is an entirely different issue.  One
may be able to read and write literary Arabic, but not to speak and
follow the vernacular of, say, Morocco, because it is essentially a
different language, with its own grammar and vocabulary, and has to be
learned separately.

>  In the case of a language with (basically) phonemic writing
>  (e.g.  Esperanto, Lojban),

I fail to see where the phonemic writing comes in.  (The Arabic and
the Chinese linguistic situation have nothing to do with the writing
systems used by the literary languages.)

>  it seems somewhat unnecessary to make any
>  distinction between written and spoken use.

Still, I can read and write Lojban, but can't speak or follow it (I
haven't tried, but I know it won't work), although the written and the
spoken language are the same, and I may want to be able to express
this fact.

Ivan