Friday, February 10, 2012

On Language: Invention is Rife in Linguistic Behavior


"It's worth considering that standard English is a sort of invented language. It's not really the language that any particular person speaks. It's a sort of abstraction from that, with some rules added on about how you would do it if you were doing it at your best. It's not really a natural language for most English speakers. So, invention is rife in linguistic behavior."
Michael Adams, author of From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages to Milton Rosenberg on WGN radio

A podcast of the interview, and, indeed, many, many podcasts of the Extension 720 program hosted by Dr. Milton Rosenberg can be found here on the WGN Radio web site.

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