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Padraic Brown skrev:
--- On Sun, 1/17/10, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@hidden.email> wrote: On 2010-01-17 Padraic Brown wrote:Agreed. Though, again, it will depend on how you mean "realism" here. Do you mean "realistic" as in correct by the book on Vulgar Latin? Or do you mean "realistic" as in not artifical sounding, simulating the *life* within a VL dialect, but not necessarily being a direct descendant or close relative?That would be the difference between realistic and naturalistic as I use the terms.OK. For me, the two terms are synonymous in a situation like this.
It is useful to make a distinction between 1) What actually occurs in natlangs/a specific natlang/a specific group of natlangs. 2) What looks like it could occur in natlangs/the specific natlang(s) under consideration but actually doesn't. and I'm won't to call (1) 'realistic' and (2) 'naturalistic'. Clearly there are things which fall under (1) if considering the set of all natlangs (or some group of natlangs) but under (2) when considering only a particular group, or some other group, so that one needs a more fine-grained scale when comparing a conlang to a particular group of natlangs rather than the set of all natlangs. how about (taking Romance languages as an example): 1) Things which do occur in Romance natlangs, or a particular branch of them. These are clearly *real*. 2) Things which do not occur in Romance natlangs or a particular branch of them, but look pretty much as if they could. These are *realistic*. 3) Things which occur in natlangs, but not in any Romance natlangs or a particular branch of them. These are *natural*. 4) Things which don't occur in natlangs but look as they could. These are *naturalistic*. 5)...8) The negations of these, e.g.: 8) Things which don't occur in natlangs and which don't look as they could. These are unnaturalistic. Clearly (2) or its negation may combine with (3) and (4) or their negations to get more specific sets/descriptions of features which may be more or less interesting depending on your stance on realism and/or naturalism. Thus e.g. Germanic-style umlaut and lexical tone are both natural features/processes, but umlaut may look more realistic from a Romance POV -- though there is probably some Romance creole with lexical tone to prove that assumption false! A further parameter within 'realism' in relation to 'reality') and naturalism in relation to naturalness is *plausibility*,or if you will degrees of realism/naturalism defined as closeness/distance to the real or the natural. Granted this
may be a high degree of specialization of the terms, but that is what diciplinary jargon usually boils down to: those engaged in a field have use for finer distinctions of meaning than those available previously or outside the field, and so they specialize and differentiate terms that previously or elsewhere were/are synonyms. Once you've established that our *thing*(res) is Romance languages (nat or con) as opposed to non-Romance languages (nat or con) then this specialization of *real/-istic*
vs. *natural/-istic* makes a lot of sense. NB that this *thing* straddles the fact vs. fiction divide too, so "fact/-ual/-istic" would not work as well. Germanic-style i-umlaut is not real WRT Romance languages (since it doesn't occur in Romnatlangs) but it is a fact WRT the Romconlang Rhodrese, because I've made (factum habeo) it so.
I like tomato halves fried in olive oil and sprinkled with thyme.Will have to try.My son can't even stand the sight of the fried tomatoes!Ha! Perhaps he should try em with catsup and mustard!
He wouldn't touch either of those either. He wants his hotdogs 'natural', which to him means only with bread and no garnish of any kind. That 'natural' includes bread is part of his culinary jargon! ;-) /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient � la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)