RobF -> RE: Punctuation Counts! (Aug. 25 2023 2:08:30)
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The real argument for language killing us comes from a minority school of thought (tiny really) in linguistics: the Leiden school, spearheaded by Kortlandt and van Driem. They hold that language is a parasitic organism. Here is a link to George Van Dreim’s essay on the matter: https://www.isw.unibe.ch/ueber_uns/e41180/e523709/e546130/2008d_ger.pdf I haven’t read it yet, but I found the title “The Language Organism: Parasite or Mutualist?” and the early statement, “Some have misinterpreted the conception of language as an organism as no more than a metaphor. Yet Schleicher’s statement about language as a life form was unequivocally literal”, to be challenging.* Regardless of any feelings or opinions I may have on the matter, the topic could still be fairly significant and relevant for study and consideration in today’s world due to the rise of AI-powered language models, such as ChatGPT. Matter of fact, someone should ask ChatGPT to write an essay on this. It would be interesting to see what the latest evolutionary step of the language organism has to say about itself. After all, it might be a true divergence, in the sense that AI-powered language could be seen to represent the birth of an entire new organism. If only metaphorically. * I’m not even sure I can get past the presumption that humanity itself represents an organism. If so, it places language in the category of being a conduit between individual sentient organisms, which then would enable the existence of the supraorganism, humanity. So, it can’t be non-mutualist, it can’t even exist in the manner they describe, as they’re bestowing upon it qualities that it can’t, by definition, possess. Language can only exist as an organism if humanity exists as one, and if that is the case, then language becomes a conduit and no more. And, if humanity is not an organism, then language cannot be one, either, the whole argument is moot. If I’m making any sense, at all. AI-powered language may change the dynamics, but the original premise appears to be founded on a fallacy.
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