You're totally right of course
"a species of babbling, retarded shit-flingers" was gross hyperbole on my part. I'm no linguist and happy to admit that my understanding of the subject does not go beyond the level of popular science books.

A few points though. History has furnished us with examples of people who ended up with a true pidgin as their first (not native) language - slaves taken from various countries who ended up in the same plantation. Within a single generation this developed into a pidgin language derived from the language of their captors (I can tell you know already this, of course). These pidgins eventually developed into creole languages, which had a consistent grammar and only loose connections between derived and original words, like Tok Pisin. This creolization does not appear to support my argument, since it shows how language and grammar will develop spontaneously and ecologically (and as recent findings show, with a greater dependence on pragmatics than was previously admitted).

But I stand by my criticism of the now orthodox view on linguistics because of what I see as two very misguided assumptions.

First is the Hegelian assumption that I discussed briefly above. We do not have an explanation of the mechanism (or supposed mechanism) that keeps language evolving and alive. When you say that 'nobody designed language' you leave out the very salient examples of design in the history of language - the strict formalization of Latin and the various attempts in Europe to bring local languages more in line with Latin using prescriptive grammars and dictionaries (L'Académie française springs to mind). Not only that, there is the assumption that similar formalizing activities never took place in places like ancient Egypt or the Fertile Crescent, despite the discovery of works of grammar that would seem to suggest just that.

Secondly, there is the relativistic assumption that the linguistic output of two cultures is equally valid, regardless of any evidence to the contrary, and swinging accusations of ethnocentrism and even racism at anyone who questions this view (not accusing you of this of course). But then, you don't need me to tear relativism a new arsehole because Sokal did that in 1998 (and Paul Boghossian finished the job in 2006). I don't believe that you could translate a complicated book, say for example, A Brief History of Time, or Kant's Critique of Pure Reason into a creole language, no matter how skilful the translation, and expect the meaning to be preserved in all its subtlety. A better example might be comparing the King James Bible to one of these awful American "everyday English" bibles - a hell of a lot of depth of meaning is lost.

I do not think that language left to its own devices will reduce us to meaningless grunts (although I am aware of an increasing amount of meaningless grunts in the language I hear spoken every day). In tribal cultures, all members must be keen botanists, meterologists, cartographers and much more, and this is very clearly reflected in their language (I'm thinking of Jared Diamond's account of the language of Papua New Guinea). But in Europe we live in a built environment, where technology, media and other artifice is our entire existence. My concern is that by abandoning prescriptive grammar and allowing pragmatics and mere accident to shape language, we will end up with language that reflects life in the west as it appears, rather than how it is. To truly take part in modern civil society you need to understand many extremely complex and counter-intuitive ideas, and I think that relying on some unseen hand based on theories of broad patterns in history to guide language may be a mistake.

Edit: I just bought the book you recommended. I've heard of it before, looks like a good overview and I'm looking forward to reading it.
(leviticus no longer likes the cut of your gib on, Fri 22 Apr 2011, 12:19, Reply)