New publications on interlinguistics & Esperanto

Jen lastatempaj verkoj pri interlingvistiko & Esperantologio en la angla / ... both in English:

Towards a Linguistic Worldview for Artificial Languages by Ida Stria (Poznań 2015)

Language communication information: Special issue on interlinguistic and Esperanto Studies / Język komunikacja informacja: Numer specjalny Interlingwistykai Esperantologia #10 (Poznań 2015)

Chloe Yelena Miller, William Blake, Esperanto: time & language

I stumbled across this interesting blog post:

Chloe Yelena Miller and the Past, Present, and Future 

The subject is the manipulation of verb tenses and thus time in poems. Two examples are given and analyzed. The first is William Blake's poem "The Tyger." The second is a poem by contemporary poet Chloe Yelena Miller, from her chapbook Unrest. (The poem is also reproduced by the blogger The Dressing at 2013 DC Shorts: Women Working without Words, but now back to the first blog post mentioned.)

Here is Miller's poem, followed by Kenneth Ronkowitz's commentary.

    No Infinitive
 
We met in Esperanto, declared:                   Mi amas vin.

Which means (in case I forget):                    I love you.

We swam in the Sardinian sea, the water as blank
as your conjugations. I wear one piece of my two piece:
topless.

I will, first person future,
label these photos in our language
without a national body. The word
for our actions is not a noun.

Gender neutral, were we
heterosexual? The flexible
syntax translucent, nudity's definition.

I could pronounce (phonetics):                     You.

There were rules: The accent
is always on the next to last syllable.

It was carnival, a meatless (almost meaty) masked
party. Lent followed, we gave up
each other (reflexively).

The commentary:

I like it right off that they met in Esperanto. Not a place, but a language, and a word that translates as "one who hopes." We could follow the thread of Esperanto's three tenses and three moods. Maybe your poem can work with the poetic and non-English jussive mood that is used for wishes and commands.

And her poem ends "reflexively" - a form that cause problems for English speakers learning a new language since this feature is practically absent in English. The literal reflexive means the agent is simultaneously the patient. That's grammar class talk meaning we do it to ourselves. How poetic is the reflexive: to enjoy oneself, hurt oneself, kill oneself, convince, deny or to encourage oneself.

William Sanders Scarborough & Volapük in the Black Press

William Sanders Scarborough (1852-1926) was one of the most outstanding of outstanding Black American intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries, individual scholars who, because of the dire predicament of Black Americans, assumed all the roles a Black professional person could fill: writer, educator, professor, administrator, civil rights advocate and leader . . .Scarborough was born into slavery and rose to become a leading scholar of the Greek and Latin classics and president of Wilberforce University.

Scarborough was resurrected from the forgetfulness of history with the publication of two books, edited by Michele Valerie Ronnick: The Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough: An American Journey From Slavery to Scholarship (2005) and The Works of William Sanders Scarborough: Black Classicist and Race Leader (2006).

In 2010, in the course of preparing a lecture on the 100th anniversary of the Universal Esperanto Congress in Washington, DC, in addition to researching the mainstream American press for relevant articles, I decided to search the databases of the Black press for reports on Esperanto and the quest for an international language. Here are the articles on Volapük, now on my web site:

• Volapük in the Black Press, 1888 
• Volapuk (Chicago Defender, 1911)

Note that the two signed articles, from August 1888, were authored by Scarborough. Given that Esperanto saw the light of day only in 1887, 1888 was apparently too soon for the American philological community to compare it to Volapük. (I don't recall when Esperanto first captured attention of someone in the anglophone world. It did not take long.)

I found another reference to Volapük in Scarborough's Works. Here is the quote with the bibliographical information on the original publication. Note also that this article was written in the heat of the imperialist scramble to carve up Africa:

The influence of civilization is a mighty lever in shaping the destiny of language. Dialects crumble before it, and the diversity of tongues drifts toward unity. The language of the intelligent must supersede, wholly or in part, that of the unintelligent wherever they come in contact, either by displacing it or fashioning it after its own mold. As the weaker languages and dialects of Europe have disappeared before the light of intelligence, so will the languages and dialects of Africa drop out of existence, one by one, it may be, as the same influence shall quicken and permeate the people. One by one will the stronger swallow up the weak, until the speech of the dominant people shall prevail, jargon first, perhaps, extinction later. Doubtless many more dialects than now exist have passed away, some of them leaving not a relic behind to tell the story of their existence, while of others bare skeletons of speech may be found here and there, but hardly enough to indicate their linguistic relations. The forces that produced these changes are still at work, but in a greater degree; and, though we can make no definite statement as to the results growing out of the invasion of Africa by foreign languages, yet again we believe that the inflectional will survive the uninflectional languages of the world. No artificial language can stand the test of time. In fact, it will hardly gain a foothold, but like Volapük, will die in its infancy. 5 [footnote clarifying Volapük] 

SOURCE: Works, p. 242. Original source: "Function and future of foreign languages in Africa," Methodist Review 76, November-December 1894, pp. 890-899.

Jean-Pierre Brisset & logophilia

Brisset no doubt returned to Port Royal and to the General Grammar before Saussure. In fact, the title of his principal linguistic work acknowledges the debt: The Logical Grammar. It is as if Brisset had successfully blended Grammar and Logic in order to finally create that portmanteau science which others before him had dreamed of, beginning with Leibniz and his project of a universal characteristic. Yet, in the first phase of his research, he restricts himself to monoglossia, and at no point becomes involved in inventing his own Esperanto. Like all the other logophiles, Brisset will only be able to find universality in what already exists. In spite of his ‘logical’ requirement, his work remains essentially founded upon an insurmountable empiricism, and attached to a research which remains flush with a chaos of the language that he is only concerned with ordering.

SOURCE: Pierssens, Michel. The Power of Babel: A Study of Logophilia, translated by Carl R. Lovitt (London; Boston; Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 65.

Louis Wolfson & logophilia (no Esperanto)

[. . .] Wolfson, like Brisset and Roussel, has no thought of producing a new language, for which he would set codes, and which would compensate for the insufficiencies of each language which has not provided signified and signifying series totally isomorphous to those of English. By studying an increasing number of languages, Wolfson, like the poet according to Mallarmé, strives to ‘remunerate the deficiencies of languages’. This is an interminable undertaking that a personal Esperanto could have greatly simplified, had the rationality of an economic calculation been able to find a place in that which recognizes only the law of desire, whose despotism cannot be repelled. Like Mallarmé, Saussure, and Roussel, Wolfson comes face to face with something like a transcendence, an enigmatic being which effects the collusion of a desire and a form. This elusive phantom, some aspect of which escapes from every grasp, whether it be that of science, literature, or whatever, is the sign. The absolute horizon of pleasure and suffering, of being and knowledge. Wolfson cannot tolerate the idea of splitting the sign, and isolating the signifier from the signified. The technique of universal translatability which he institutes from one language to all the others seeks only to preserve the integrity of the meaning, on condition that it be free to migrate, to circulate among all languages without coming up against the frontiers of a system which would arrest its flux, on condition that it be able to reterritorialize or expatriate itself at will. This promotes an incessant motility agitating from within the paradoxical content of a membrane, which makes languages a coalescence of sounds and meanings struggling against chance. The French in which Wolfson finally tells his story constitutes a makeshift solution, the stasis of a respite in the depths of a temporary refuge to which he episodically manages to withdraw. In no sense is it a metalanguage with which the manipulator would put an end to the manipulations which affect him. There is no more a place in Wolfson’s adventure for a metalanguage, than there is for any Esperanto—thereby verifying Lacan’s formula. Language remains for him an empirical continuum; the territory cannot be divided so as to permit the emergence of a mastery, nor is there any possibility of a reprieve in which the subject would no longer be in question, in which the interrogation which continually calls him into question would lose its impact. In other words, for Wolfson, there is no science.

SOURCE: Pierssens, Michel. The Power of Babel: A Study of Logophilia, translated by Carl R. Lovitt (London; Boston; Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 60.

Alan Libert on the artificial language Fitusa & others

Alan Libert has published several books in the field of interlinguistics and related topics, among them:

Libert, Alan. A Priori Artificial Languages. Muenchen: Lincom Europa, 2000.

Libert, Alan. Artificial Descendants of Latin. München: Lincom Europa, 2004.

Libert, Alan Reed. Daughters of Esperanto. München: Lincom Europa, 2008.

Libert, Alan. Mixed Artificial Languages. München: Lincom Europa, 2003.

Moskovsky, Christo; Libert, Alan. Essays on Natural and Artificial Languages. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 2009.

And:

Libert, Alan Reed. "What can Pragmaticists Learn from Studying Artificial Languages?," in Perspectives on Linguistic Pragmatics, edited by Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, Marco Carapezza (New York : Springer, 2013), pp. 397-432.

See also articles in Journal of Universal Language, under the auspices of Language and Translation Research Institute, Sejong University, Korea (See also listing of individual articles on my site)

"Questions in Natural and Artificial Languages" by Christo Moskovsky & Alan Libert. Volume 7 Number 2, 2006, pp. 65-120

"Possibilities for Passives in Natural and Artificial Languages" by Christo Moskovsky & Alan Libert. Volume 5 Number 2, 2004, pp. 101-149

"A Survey of Relative Pronouns and their Uses in Natural and Artificial Languages" by Alan Libert & Christo Moskovsky. Volume 4 Number 2, 2003, pp. 61-116

And here is a video of Libert speaking on the a priori language project Fitusa / Jen video de Alan Libert pri apioria lingvoprojekto Fitusa:

John McWhorter on conlangs

 John McWhorter is a linguist specializing in creole languages and a political reactionary focused on problems of race. In more recent years he has been addressing the public also on matters of language. In this video, he turns his attention to conlangs:

Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?


McWhorter affirms that these conlangs exhibit all the features of real languages including fully elaborated grammars, speech communities, and linguistic change over time.

Note also that the development of these languages is tied to, and most importantly originated in,  science fictional world-building. 

As I indicated in a previous post, McWhorter has confessed to knowing Esperanto. If these hobby languages can be justified as real languages, then Esperanto deserves linguistic legitimation all the more. I would like to see McWhorter do a video or podcast on this infinitely more important constructed language, Esperanto, which builds on the real world, has a speech community that functions in the real world (with unfortunate exceptions), serves a useful purpose, and can profit far more from validation from linguists.

William Blake vs 17th-18th century linguistics (2)

Essick, Robert N. William Blake and the Language of Adam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

See previous post on this topic for table of contents, etc. And see my web site for:

•      Introduction: on the state of scholarship on Blake as artist & as poet, & on previous studies of Blake's linguistic concepts, the focus of this book: Blake compared to the rationalist & empiricist linguistic ideas of the 17th & 18th centuries


•      William Blake vs Rationalist Linguistics (Excerpt) from Chapter 3: Natural Signs and the Fall of Language; pp. 133-135.

William Blake vs 17th-18th century linguistics

Essick, Robert N. William Blake and the Language of Adam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Contents

       List of Plates                                                                      ix

       Note on Texts                                                                      x

       Introduction                                                                         1

1.    Adam Naming the Beasts and its Companions            6

2.    In Pursuit of the Motivated Sign                                     28

3.    Natural Signs and the Fall of Language                        104

4.    Language and Modes of Production                              160

5.    The Return to Logos                                                        195

       Afterword: Romantic Languages and Modern

            Methodologies                                                           237

       Bibliography                                                                   240

       Index                                                                               261

Here two usually distinct lines of humanistic inquiry intersect: Blake studies and the history of linguistics and the scientific revolution. Conceptions of language and signification, evolving with the rationalism and empiricism of early modern philosophy and science, are challenged by Blake’s radically different world view.

Of particular interest here is Chapter 2, in which Blake’s view of language is contrasted with the philosophical languages of the 17^th and 18^th centuries—Wilkins, Dalgarno, etc.—a comparison one does not often see. See also pp. 133-135 for more on John Wilkins.

Presumably here one can learn more about the historically evolving dialectic between scientism and romanticism in the modern world.

Jonathan Swift: standardizing English vs. philosophical languages?

I blogged before on Swift's satire of the philosophical languages of John Wilkins and others in Gulliver's Travels. Part III. A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan; Chapter V:

Jonathan Swift & philosophical languages

In that post I linked also to other studies of the relation of Swift to the linguistics and notions about language in his time.

Now I want to point out another facet of Swift's ideas about language. This essay can be found all over the web, presumably; here's one link:

A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue by Jonathan Swift

Various essays contextualize Swift's intervention:

An Introduction to: A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue

"How barbarously we yet write and speak...": The 18th Century & the Origins of Prescriptive Grammar

Jonathan Swift and Language (Background): Notes on Swift and Language and Restoration History by John Dylan McNeill

Our Fallen Tongue: Jonathan Swift's Indictment of Humanity in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels by John Dylan McNeill

Swift and the English Language by suture

Language and the Hostility of Time: The Failure of Swift's Prescriptivism in A Proposal for Correcting, Improvingand Ascertaining the English Tongue by Jukka Tiusanen

My previous post links to articles that juxtpose Swift to Wilkins et al. This monograph does so as well, with an extensive treatment of Swift's ideas about language:

Language and Reality in Swift's A Tale of a Tub by Frederik N. Smith

Wilkins' founding role in the Royal Society and his speculations on a voyage to the Moon, in relation to Swift's satirical works, are also topics for investigation.

Vilmos Benczik, postmodernisto?

Pri: Vilmos Benczik, "La esperanta literaturo tra la lupeo de kelkaj lingvoteorioj kaj literaturkonceptoj," ESPERANTOLOGIO / ESPERANTO STUDIES, EES Kajero 5, 2011 / Issue No. 5, p. 37-59.

Dum la sovetia epoko Vilmos Benczik estis motoro de multa esperantista literatura aktivado, kaj interpretis aferojn laŭ marksisma modelo. Sed plurajn jarojn post la fino de tiu epoko, li verŝajne tute forgesis marksismon kaj estas kaptita de la idearo de Jacques Derrida. Li eĉ pensas ke ties lingvoteorio (kiu, notu, havas nenian lingvosciencan subtenon) instigas pli favoran teorian sintenon al Esperanto kaj ties literaturo. Mi deprimiĝas legante ĉi tiujn absurdaĵojn.

International Language Review (1955-1968)

Jen la koncernaj retligoj:

International Language Review (issues listing + selected contents)

• “Signs and Symbols Could Have Saved the World” by Floyd Hardin
• Language and the Rhetorical Representation of Life by Floyd Hardin
• Circular: Letter to Floyd Hardin, October 3, 1958 from Mario Pei
• Quest for World Language Called Brawling Competition

50 numeroj de International Language Review estis eldonataj sub tiu titolo inter 1955 & 1968. Poste la redakcio, titolo, kaj karaktero de la revuo ŝanĝiĝis:

International Language Reporter, Vol. XV, 1^st Quarter 1969, No. 51. Continues International Language Review, incorporating Biophilist. Editor: John Ragsdale. Denver. Quarterly. Vols.15-16 (no. 51-58); 1st quarter 1969 - 4th quarter 1970.

Eco-Logos, vol. XVII, 1^st quarter 1971, no. 59. Continues International Language Reporter. Quarterly. Vols. 17-25 (no. 59-94); 1971-1979.

Mankas en mia kolekto n-roj 1, 3, 20, 22. Eventuale mi enretigos pluajn enhavaĵojn kiuj interesas min.

Estis/as multaj frenezuloj en la internacilingvaj movadoj. Ne ĉiuokaze temas pri iom da troa idealismo kaj utopiismo kaj manko de realismo, sed efektiva stulteco, ofte ligata al religia mesiismo. Floyd Hardin, redaktoro de la iama grava interlingvistika revuo International Language Review [Internacilingva Revuo], ŝajnas tia homo:

“Signs and Symbols Could Have Saved the World” [Signoj kaj simboloj povus esti savintaj la mondon]

Pluraj tiaj homoj aperis en tiu revuo, eĉ leteroj al usona prezidento Kennedy ligante universalan lingvon al disvastigo de kristana usona civilizacio. Do, frenezuloj.

Rimarku, ke mi aldonis kelkajn eksterajn retligojn al mia enhavopaĝo. Plejparte ili estas artikoloj el la revuo sub iu el ties tri titoloj; kelkaj ligoj devenas de retejo de Don Harlow.  La plej laste trovita ligas al artikolo en usona ĵurnalo en 1963:

Quest for World Language Called Brawling Competition (The Blade [Toledo, Ohio], Wednesday, August 14, 1963, p. 9) [Serĉo de mondlingvo nomita batalaĉa konkurso]

Krom la revuon mem oni disdonis la jenan folion:

Circular: Letter to Floyd Hardin, October 3, 1958 from Mario Pei

Oni rimarku, ke malgraŭ la rolo de Mario Pei en strebado al mondlingvo, kaj kvankam li estis filologo kaj profesoro, pri lingvoscienco li estis tute kaduka kaj absurde kontraŭscienca, vidpunkto dividita kun Floyd Hardin, redaktoro de la revuo.

Jarojn poste Pei verkis libron pri sia politika konservatismo, kiu montras lian socipolitikan nekompetentecon, eble antaŭan krom samtempan. Kutime en Usono reakciuloj paranoje oponas "unumondismo"n. Sed persone kaj lingve Pei travivis antaŭan epokon da ekstrema konflikto kaj amasekstermado, kaj la postmondmilita mondo alportis la danĝeron de atommilito; eble tial lin okupis strebado al internacia kunlaboro kaj universala lingvo.

Do Linguists Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Linguists Dream of Electric Sheep? by Joe Trotta, 27 March 2013.

This is a single paragraph stream of consciousness post. Tolkein is quoted as claiming that Esperanto et sim. are dead because there was no world-building around the languages created. Láadan is discussed. The author wonders about sci fi conlangs. He reports that Benjamin Lee Whorf of linguistic relativity fame wrote a science fiction novella, 'The Ruler of the Universe'.

The only aspect of this post that is useful is the bibliography, in particular these items (references completed where possible):

Adams, Michael, ed. From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Armitt, Lucie. "Your Word Is My Command: the Structures of Language and Power in Women's Science Fiction," in Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction, edited by Lucie Armitt (London; New York: Routledge, 1991).

Barnes, Myra Edwards. Linguistics and Languages in Science Fiction-Fantasy. New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Hockett, Charles. "How to Learn Martian, " Astounding Science Fiction, October 1957,  pp. 76-84.

Meyers, Walter E. Aliens and Linguists: Language Study and Science Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.

Rabkin, Eric S. “Metalinguistics and Science Fiction,” Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1979, pp. 79-97.

Samuels, David. “Alien Tongues,” in E.T. Culture: Anthropology in Outer Spaces, edited by Debbora Battaglia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 94-129.

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (4)

The final performances of this great play in Silver Spring, Maryland are today:

Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM

An Open Forum discussion will follow the matinee.

Read this brief interview:

Better Know an Actor: Mitchell Hébert - Forum Theatre

Note that the actor who plays both the main character and Zamenhof says that he is most moved when he recites Zamenhof's lines saying that Esperanto was worth creating even though the Nazis killed his whole family. I think I'm going to be verklempt all over again.

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (3)

Everyone I know who saw this play loved it. Now for some more links.

First, the Forum Theatee's own web page for the play:

The Language Archive

There is also a blog for your comments (see mine):

OpenForum Blog: Announcing a Season, part 2 of 4

The Forum Theater also has a Facebook page. The Theatre references my review on this blog and says (21 Feb.):

A nice blog response to THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE from an Esperanto perspective! Dankon!

To which actor Mitchell Hébert, who plays the Language Archivist George and Dr. Zamenhof, adds: "Dankon!!"

Now for reviews in the press and the blogosphere. The first one I found was:

The Language Archive, By Tim Treanor (DC Theatre Scene, February 20, 2012)

This is an eminently fair and positive review. I don't agree with the few negative criticisms, but they are not major.

Here is a very attentive and favorable review:

The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, By Amanda Gunther, Maryland Theatre Guide, February 20, 2012

The Washington City Paper review plays up the comic aspects of the play:

The Language Archive at Forum Theatre, Reviewed: Or: The case of the tongue-tied linguist By Rebecca J. Ritzel • Washington City Paper • February 24, 2012

Ritzel indeed lauds the comedy. As for her less favorable remarks, the show did not drag for me at any point. She also criticizes Mary's encounter with the ostensibly suicidal baker. Of course there is exaggeration and not every encounter depicted would be realistic outside of the theater. The reviewer does not adequately attend to the serious side of the play. While a bare account of the theme might strike the unwary reader as trite, the execution of the play's premise is a work of superior craftsmanship, and is in the end emotionally powerful. Already one reader's comment has appeared. I may add mine as well.

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive" (2)

The Language Archive
Presented by Forum Theatre
By Julia Cho
Directed by Jessica Burgess
February 16 - March 10, 2012
Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland

In my previous blog post of last June on this play, I embedded videos of scenes from the play as well as of playwright Julia Cho. There is, of course, a vast difference between watching a YouTube video and experiencing a play live in a theater. Still, I will claim that the Round House production is second to none. The intensity of the acting beats what I see in these videos. Both the hilarity and pathos of this production are most compelling, hence I recommend it to all.

---

“Language is an act of faith.” – L. L. Zamenhof (as an apparition)

The Language Archive, opening with a marital conflict and broadening with other characters and relationships, gets more and more hilarious, but in the end it is incredibly moving. The bickering between the language archivist and his wife rings all too familiar. The nature of communication is shown to be a much broader phenomenon than the language in which it is imperfectly embodied and is shown to be itself imperfect in its paralinguistic dimension. Esperanto plays a major role in the play—both comical and serious—and Zamenhof himself is a character. The notion of the language archive—an institution dedicated to the recording and preservation of dying languages—is not a mere playwright's gimmick: there is poignancy in the vanishing worlds of the last speakers of these languages, and in the loss of personal relationships in worlds still living, but also something profound is conveyed about the chronic failure of the quest for mutual understanding. The play does have a resolution but neither a happy nor an unhappy ending. We constantly fall short in our attempt to communicate ourselves, and yet we persist. Language is an act of faith.

---

Towards the end of the play, when Zamenhof makes the statement I quoted, I started to choke up, as I did at play's end, which involved both the final "resolutions" of the characters as well as the various dead languages being spoken over the loudspeaker. While attempting to minimize the spoilers, I guess I have to explain my reaction to the Zamenhof character. The treatment of Zamenhof as a wise old man reminds me of the appearances of Einstein in popular culture, in movies or TV shows. But what's relevant in this particular scene is that the lab assistant asked Zamenhof if he would have acted differently had he known that all his children would be targeted and murdered by the Nazis because of Esperanto. Zamenhof replied, no. And then he says: "Language is an act of faith." For me this encapsulated the theme of the whole play. But the broad theme was love and communication. Both often fail, yet even with the imperfection of the process and the outcome, there is nonetheless a vehicle, even if an imperfect one, which provides a means at least to make something happen—a bold foray into the unknown and uncontrollable course of events.

When I relayed this scene yesterday to my companion over coffee, once again I was verklempt. My companion thought this utterance by the phantom Zamenhof a profound one. Why does it affect me so? It reminds me of the program note of another philosophical favorite, Duke Ellington:

Communication itself is what baffles the multitude. It is both so difficult and so simple. Of all men's fears, I think that men are most afraid of being what they are — in direct communication with the world at large. They fear reprisals, the most personal of which is that they "won't be understood."

. . . Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty — trying to communicate themselves, understood or not — miracles have happened.

I have, by the way, translated this into Esperanto:

Duke Ellington Komunikas ‘Preter Kategorio’

Returning from public to private communication, I find it rather remarkable that the notion of compiling a recording of "I love you" in all the dying and extinct languages of the world works so well as a theatrical device. You might think it the corniest gimmick ever. Not so. No, sir. Nothing could be more effective than the voices of all those ghosts of lost worlds, expressing the fundamental human motivation behind everything we care about. The peculiar, divergent metaphorical expressions in all those languages that we unify under the rubric of this one meaning reflect both the imperfection of the linguistic vehicle and the concept it aims to express beyond its own linguistic means; that is, we feel the striving to communicate those lost and invisible worlds (of two people or of an entire culture) even while not comprehending the languages through which they are spoken. Hence our own perception is raised beyond our own unreflective habits. Hence theater itself pushes out beyond the limits of culture into a new perception of our reality.

And now to reconnect the private and the public, and in this note, Ellington with Zamenhof. Esperanto never was the all-encompassing vehicle for Zamenhof's aims, nor could the development of the Esperanto movement be contained within or adequately expressive of those aims. Yet, groping half-blind into the uncertain future, with all the imperfections of human relations and communication, Zamenhof cast his lot with his linguistic creation, a language unique in its genesis, character and physiognomy, but still only a language, like all others, yet a language made with love. One feels it in Zamenhof's own passion. Whatever other illusions one wishes to dispel with respect to the language and its creator, this vital force continues to inspire. Lives have been lived and lost with this language. And the fact of striving is as important as the outcome. Expression is happiness.

Sveda lingvisto Mikael Parkvall defendas Esperanton

Pri artikolo:

"Esperanto ne estas plene funkcianta lingvo" en Libera Folio, 2009-12-16

"En sia populara libro pri lingvaj mitoj, la sveda lingvisto Mikael Parkvall atakas ankaŭ la aserton, ke Esperanto ne estus plenvalora lingvo. Li mem ne estas esperantisto, sed defendas la lingvon kaj la ideon kun entuziasmo . . ."

Sekvas traduko el la sveda.

Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond

Jen kurso ĉe la University of Texas at Austin:

LIN 312 • Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond

T.e. "Inventitaj Lingvoj: Klingono kaj Pretere." Estas ankaŭ aparta retejo kun materialoj ĉi-teme:

LIN 312 • Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond

Julia Cho: "The Language Archive"

Scenes from "The Language Archive" by Julia Cho



"Scenes from the world premiere of Julia' Cho's "The Language Archive," featuring Leo Marks, Betsy Brandt, Tony Amendola, Laura Heisler and Linda Gehringer playing at South Coast Repertory March 26 - April 25, 2010."

The Language Archive - Opening Night



Esperanto rolas en ĉi tiu teatraĵo. / Esperanto plays a role in this play:

Preview "The Language Archive" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2011



Julia Cho



. . . kaj de ĉi tiuj videoj troveblas retligoj al pluaj videoj. Jen recenzo/ . . . and there are links from these sources to other videos. Here is a review:

"A Linguist at a Loss for Words Regarding Love" By CHARLES ISHERWOOD, The New York Times, October 17, 2010.

Ĉi tiu vide-recenzo esprimas ioman malaprobon de la teatraĵo sed laŭdas Esperanton. / These video-reviewers have some harsh remarks for the play but praise Esperanto:

AndrewAndrew Insta-Review of The Language Archive

Gramsci, language, Esperanto

In the late 1980s I investigated Antonio Gramsci's views on language including his hostility to the Esperanto movement. On a totally different track, encountering the Gramsci boom in the '90s I developed serious reservations about the transference of Gramsci's notion of organic intellectuals to contemporary circumstances. All of my suspicions were confirmed. I know I've mentioned this here and there but I don't recall writing anything systematic about it. But here are a couple short commentaries:

Antonio Gramsci, Organic Intellectuals, and the Division of Labor 

Marxism & Totality & Gramsci & Della Volpe

None of this touches on Gramsci's view of language, but it does suggest my suspicion of organicism. It might relate to Gramsci's treating Esperanto as anathema. I just chanced upon this article:

Gunster, Shane. "Gramsci’s Linguistic Turn: Critical Theory, Vernacular Materialism and the Grammar of Revolution" [Review of Ives, Peter. 2004. Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.], Topia 13, pp. 165-168.

Gunster begins in a most unconvincing fashion:

Conceived in linguistic terms, then, the construction of a hegemonic cultural formation involves the molecular translation of diverse, immanent communicative practices into a coherent and (relatively) unified grammatical structure. Gramsci contrasts the progressive, organic character of this process to regressive forms of cultural domination that involve the external imposition of arbitrary, fixed linguistic regimes that serve to displace or repress, rather than integrate, indigenous patterns of language. Hence, for example, his fierce opposition to the naive, technocratic utopianism of those socialists and communists who advocated Esperanto as a means of artificially overcoming the communicative barriers that slowed the fashioning of a unified class consciousness among workers and peasants in different parts of Italy.

Clearly, Gunster  understands Esperanto no better than Gramsci did, or why the voluntaristic internationalism of proletarian Esperantists would be an imposition but national cultural unification is not. The balance of the review is not illuminating about any of the ideas discussed. I cannot draw any conclusions about Ives based on Gunster's useless review.