Re: [Fwd: [evol-psych] Brain buzz that proves Chinese is har...

--- In Nostratica@yahoogroups.com, erobert52@... wrote:

> Yes, in languages that have tones, people listen to the tones. So

what?

>
> It's the CONCLUSIONS the evolutionary psychologist school always

make of

> their research that are the problem, and then what non-academics

make of these

> conclusions. Let's look at what is being implied:
>
> "Chinese is harder than English." This is bollocks. Chinese and

English are

> roughly equivalent in difficulty, and probably more so than some

other pairs of

> languages that could be mentioned. All human languages that are

transmitted

> by normal inheritance are roughly equivalent in complexity, despite

their

> diversity.
>
> "Tones are something weird and people that have tones, like the

Chinese,

> think differently from "us"." This is bollocks. Languages that have

tones can lose

> them and languages that don't have them can acquire them. Look at

Swedish.

>
> "The English language is suitable for imposition on the rest of the

world

> because thicko foreigners with half a brain can cope with it, and

native speakers

> of English can be forgiven for not bothering to learn anything

else". I don't

> think so.
>
> Let's not even bother remarking about pieces of research that look

at English

> and A.N. Other and claim to have discovered something about

language in

> general. There are enough linguists doing this without lay people

like

> psychologists starting.
>
> I stand by what I said. Evolutionary psychologists are obsessed

with trying

> to prove there are differences between ethnic groups. Then racists

use these

> "findings" to justify differences in esteem for different ethnic

groups.

>
> Ed.

I don't believe that the article even purports to make such
conclusions. With all due respect, I think you're reading too much
into this.

- Rob