Grammatical Cases: Why are they considered so hard?

[Daniel N.]

In Croatian there are 7 cases and three genders. Perhaps, instead of conspiring to unravel the very fabric of other languages the speakers of Danish, English and French should work on decluttering their sound inventories.

Actually, very few people in Croatia, likely less than 5%, maintain any difference between the dative and locative case. And dative, locative and instrumental are equal in plural for most people. The rest speak dialects with different case endings than Standard Croatian.

So it's rather 6 cases in singular, 4 in plural (since nominative = vocative in plural). And there are more than 3 genders: masculine is split to animate and inanimate in accusative singular. On the other hand, in genitive plural and dat/loc/ins plural there are no gender distinctions.

But then, there's also a special case of quantified nouns (with adjectives) after numbers 2-4. This is effectively one more case.

The system is not symmetric at all.

There's not much pressure on languages to get simpler. Most languages spoken by hunter-gatherers have really complex grammars. Only in specific circumstances, e.g. making empires with a huge number of L2 speakers, languages simplify.

[Random Review]

A big thank you to whichever kind mod fixed my bodged attempt at strikethrough text in my last post.

[Daniel N.]

I would like to add one more point. Why cases at all? My favorite theory is that they are characteristic of words languages with the SOV order (i.e. the verb comes last - and there are many, many languages like that) and languages where pronouns are not needed when subjects, since the verb usually expresses the subject person (most languages in the world are like that).

Now imagine you have a SOV English with no pronouns as subjects (except for emphasis), and you say:

is eating. (he or she is eating) - fine
girl am talking. (I'm talking to a girl) - fine

but if you would say:

rabbit is eating. - problem

it could mean two things:

1. he or she is eating the rabbit.
2. the rabbit is eating.

There are two ways to remove this ambiguity:

a) add a pronoun (he rabbit is eating)
b) mark the object somehow (e.g. at rabbit is eating)

And the "solution" b) is what gives rise to cases. Furthermore, most SOV languages have post-positions, so the actual "solution" would be rabbit-at is eating. Over the time, that -at could be eroded, fused with the noun, etc.

Cases are really a luxury feature for a rigid SVO language. But some basically SVO languages with quite free word order still have them. For example, Spanish a before names is just an object marker, i.e. accusative prefix.

Now, how big is a problem to learn Spanish a for e.g. English speakers? I don't know, I've never taught Spanish to English speakers, but I guess they would produce a lot of sentences without the a, at least when beginners...

My hypothesis is also outlined here, but it's a well known idea in linguistics.

[Cainntear]

It is not that bad in 1 on 1 teaching setting (I think we all subconsciously choose people likely to understand our way of thinking). It is a bit more problematic in adult group classes. There is less time for explanations and "arguing with the teacher" is actually unacceptable for many students, who would find it against their behaviour norms and would feel awkward. I agree they are not likely to accept the mistaken correction but it is a missed learning opportunity, because learning to say what we want to say is the priority. It is an absolute disaster in the classes for kids and teenagers, because some teachers simply cannot accept a child might have wanted to say something and just react with shouting or ridiculing the person. That was one of my main reasons to hate English at school, not only the teacher was shouting all the time, but she also insisted on teaching us useless nonsense and not teaching me stuff I would have wanted to say. The teachers of adults at least don't shout, but the result can still be similarily discouraging and fruitless. Our mistakes are an important part of progress and desiring appropriate corrections is the only reason to actually pay a teacher.

...which brings us back to correctness and correction. I'm all for it, but I just don't believe it can be done if the teacher doesn't know what the student is trying to say. I think I'm better than most at working it out, but when you have truly open opportunities to speak, what the students want to say is often several levels of complexity beyond what they're capable of.

That's why I'm such a big fan of... (not said this in a while)... Michel Thomas's approach. The teacher always knows what the student wants to say, and the student generally wants to say it. (Less so in the MT "method" courses. I never really wanted to say "Do you know where I can buy icons near here?" (RU) or "the ice-cream is delicious" (JA). Similarly, when I tried the Language Transfer stuff, I did feel I was being asked to say stuff that was pretty arbitrary and only included for expository reasons.) Of course, Thomas also prepares you to deal with grammatically complex language, which means you're more likely to be able to say what you actually want to say, rather than just trying to worm your way around it.

The worst thing is not fitting into the definition of the genre, which is actually a very subjective thing and hard to do even for professionals in some cases (two or three genres bordering journalism and literature, which are especially problematic in Czech). You get automatic fail for this. You need to fit the criteria to gather points. And the content doesn't matter.

I've had to mark this way in academic English classes. It's ridiculous -- I spend a hell of a lot of time explaining that yes, what my students want to do is a great, natural essay, but an "English exam essay" is a bit different.

(P.S. "not only" is an odd phrase that still invokes the old "verb second" structure that other Germanic languages retain. In English this means inserting an auxiliary. "Not only do I like it, I even bought the company!" or somesuch.)

[Cavesa]

In Croatian there are 7 cases and three genders. Perhaps, instead of conspiring to unravel the very fabric of other languages the speakers of Danish, English and French should work on decluttering their sound inventories.

Actually, very few people in Croatia, likely less than 5%, maintain any difference between the dative and locative case. And dative, locative and instrumental are equal in plural for most people. The rest speak dialects with different case endings than Standard Croatian.

So it's rather 6 cases in singular, 4 in plural (since nominative = vocative in plural). And there are more than 3 genders: masculine is split to animate and inanimate in accusative singular. On the other hand, in genitive plural and dat/loc/ins plural there are no gender distinctions.

But then, there's also a special case of quantified nouns (with adjectives) after numbers 2-4. This is effectively one more case.

The system is not symmetric at all.

There's not much pressure on languages to get simpler. Most languages spoken by hunter-gatherers have really complex grammars. Only in specific circumstances, e.g. making empires with a huge number of L2 speakers, languages simplify.

I should learn Croatian one day.

Vocative is an interesting question. In Croatian, it is the same as nominative in plural.

In Slovak, it has recently died out.

Vokatív je gramatický pád, ktorým sa hovoriaci obracia na adresáta (teda pád, ktorým sa len oslovuje).

Vokatív zo syntaktického hľadiska (z hľadiska funkcie) existuje prakticky vo všetkých jazykoch, ale vokatív z morfologického hľadiska (z hľadiska tvaru) existuje len v niekoľkých jazykoch (napr. v češtine a v rudimentárnej forme i v slovenčine) a v ostatných sa nahrádza morfologickým nominatívom, či spojením "môj + nominatív" a podobne.[chýba zdroj] Aj v tých jazykoch, ktoré majú pre vokatív zvláštny tvar (napr. v češtine), sa často používa v niektorých prípadoch nominatív. Podobne v jazykoch, ktoré skloňujú s koncovkami, je vokatív často tvorený alebo zvýrazňovaný pomocou rôznych častíc, napríklad latinské "o", talianske "oh", arabské يا alebo pomocou iných prostriedkov, napríklad členom (aramejčina) a podobne.
Vokatív v slovenčine

V slovenčine už vokatív z morfologického hľadiska takmer neexistuje, zachovalo sa iba zopár tvarov, ktoré sa už ale dnes za vokatív nepovažujú (synku, bratku, človeče, chlapče, otče, priateľu, švagre, kmotre, chlape, Bože, majstre, šéfe). Ide o staršie výrazy a staršie a ironické kontexty, iba tvary ako šéfe sú nedávno spätne prebrané z češtiny. Syntaktický vokatív sa realizuje pomocou morfologického nominatívu. V ľudovom - teda nespisovnom - jazyku možno však dnes (azda pod vplyvom angličtiny a/alebo maďarčiny) pozorovať vokatív tvorený koncovkou -i pre vlastné mená a niektorých príbuzných (Paľo - Pali, Zuza - Zuzi, mama - mami, oco - oci, babka - babi), ktorý je však často synonymný so zdrobneným nominatívom (z ktorého zrejme pôvodne aj vznikol).

Zhruba pred 30 rokmi sa ešte na slovenských školách vokatív vyučoval ako existujúci pád (tzv. 5. pád) a slovenčina mala vtedy 7 pádov. Dnes všetky relevantné jazykové príručky a učebnice vokatív za pád (myslí sa samozrejme morfologický pád) nepovažujú. Dodnes sa morfologický vokatív objavuje v liturgických textoch: "Sláva tebe, Bože náš. Pane, zmiluj sa. Otče náš. Kráľu nebeský, Utešiteľu, Duchu pravdy."

the main message in English:
the vocative is the case with which we address someone.
Syntactically (the function of it) exists in all the languages, but a morphological one exists in just a few.
In Slovak, a morphological vocative almost doesn't exist anymore. Only a few examples are left, which are not considered vocative anymore, usually older expressions or in the context of irony (synku-little son, chlapče-boy, kmotre-godfather, Bože-God).
A syntactic vocative is made with morphologic nomiantive. However, vocative with the ending-i is being used in the colloquial language, when it comes to proper names and some of the words for family.
Appropriately 30 years ago, Slovak schools still used to teach the vocative as an existing (fifth) case. These days, none the relevant literature considers it a real morphological case, even though it is still being used in liturgy.

I can see this difference everyday, as part of my classmates are slovak. It felt almost weird at first, to be called in the "wrong" case at first
But what I find the most peculiar is how new this thing is. 30 years, that is not so much.
I am very curious, whether Czech won't lose it too, because the natives are under two kinds of pressure here:
1.Foreign languages. We are getting better at those in general, and almost none of the commonly learnt ones use it.
2.Facebook and similar applications. People these days are exposed to sentences like "Jak se máte, Petr?" "Co se vám honí hlavou, Anna?" every day. It may seem unimportant, but this bit of exposure is in the daily routine of most of us several times a day. And it is not just the vocative. The whole tagging thing means wrong declinations. "Byli jsme v Brně s Radek Novák." instead of s Radkem Novákem (nominative instead of instrumental). Everyone knows it is wrong, but everyone wanting to use the tagging function of facebook has to use it this way. It is not impossible people will gradually stop feeling this as a mistake.

...which brings us back to correctness and correction. I'm all for it, but I just don't believe it can be done if the teacher doesn't know what the student is trying to say. I think I'm better than most at working it out, but when you have truly open opportunities to speak, what the students want to say is often several levels of complexity beyond what they're capable of.

That's why I'm such a big fan of... (not said this in a while)... Michel Thomas's approach. The teacher always knows what the student wants to say, and the student generally wants to say it. (Less so in the MT "method" courses. I never really wanted to say "Do you know where I can buy icons near here?" (RU) or "the ice-cream is delicious" (JA). Similarly, when I tried the Language Transfer stuff, I did feel I was being asked to say stuff that was pretty arbitrary and only included for expository reasons.) Of course, Thomas also prepares you to deal with grammatically complex language, which means you're more likely to be able to say what you actually want to say, rather than just trying to worm your way around it.

Yes, this is very true. We want to tell things beyond our capacity all the time.

There was a discussion some time ago, which discussed this as a very common source of mistakes and their fossilisazion. We learn the linguistic means to say something much much later than we need or want to say it. I would say the French subjunctive is a very common example, with many teachers and courses waiting a few years to introduce it, so the students actually using French get used to using indicative. It is not that hard to make this wrong assumption, as the subjunctive and indicative sound much less different in French than in Spanish (for example). It was hard to relearn it correctly. But this happens with lots and lots of issues. And I am not sure the very restrictive approach, like MT, which limits the things the students might want to say during the class (please correct me, if I am wrong)

This is the main reasons why I am much in favour of learning grammar rather fast (or in better words: without much postponing and beating around the bush). Even on not so useful examples. The contemporary idea that courses should directly teach us "useful" language is problematic, because vast majority of the learners won't want to say those sentences included, whichever sentences get selected. Learning the patterns is the key, so that we get freedom as fast as possible. So, I don't mind being taught stuff like the Duolingo weird sentences (I dislike other stuff about Duolingo). A funny and completely useless example is quite likely to make me learn the pattern and freely apply it on something better next time.

(P.S. "not only" is an odd phrase that still invokes the old "verb second" structure that other Germanic languages retain. In English this means inserting an auxiliary. "Not only do I like it, I even bought the company!" or somesuch.)

Thanks for the correction!
"not only the teacher was shouting all the time,she insisted on teaching us useless nonsense and not teaching me stuff I would have wanted to say." That's probably a better version.

[Cainntear]

...which brings us back to correctness and correction. I'm all for it, but I just don't believe it can be done if the teacher doesn't know what the student is trying to say. I think I'm better than most at working it out, but when you have truly open opportunities to speak, what the students want to say is often several levels of complexity beyond what they're capable of.

That's why I'm such a big fan of... (not said this in a while)... Michel Thomas's approach. The teacher always knows what the student wants to say, and the student generally wants to say it. (Less so in the MT "method" courses. I never really wanted to say "Do you know where I can buy icons near here?" (RU) or "the ice-cream is delicious" (JA). Similarly, when I tried the Language Transfer stuff, I did feel I was being asked to say stuff that was pretty arbitrary and only included for expository reasons.) Of course, Thomas also prepares you to deal with grammatically complex language, which means you're more likely to be able to say what you actually want to say, rather than just trying to worm your way around it.

Yes, this is very true. We want to tell things beyond our capacity all the time.

There was a discussion some time ago, which discussed this as a very common source of mistakes and their fossilisazion. We learn the linguistic means to say something much much later than we need or want to say it. I would say the French subjunctive is a very common example, with many teachers and courses waiting a few years to introduce it, so the students actually using French get used to using indicative. It is not that hard to make this wrong assumption, as the subjunctive and indicative sound much less different in French than in Spanish (for example). It was hard to relearn it correctly. But this happens with lots and lots of issues. And I am not sure the very restrictive approach, like MT, which limits the things the students might want to say during the class (please correct me, if I am wrong)

Oh yes, it limits it. But it's basically a few days of intensive grammar cramming (the complete published audio material for any given language is pretty much equivalent to a one-week intensive residential course), with the assumption that vocab and phraseology will be easily picked up after that, although I've generally done further study rather than rely on exposure. I'm completely anti-Krashen at a beginner stage, but I do think that learning by exposure after MT would be possible.

This is the main reasons why I am much in favour of learning grammar rather fast (or in better words: without much postponing and beating around the bush). Even on not so useful examples. The contemporary idea that courses should directly teach us "useful" language is problematic, because vast majority of the learners won't want to say those sentences included, whichever sentences get selected. Learning the patterns is the key, so that we get freedom as fast as possible. So, I don't mind being taught stuff like the Duolingo weird sentences (I dislike other stuff about Duolingo). A funny and completely useless example is quite likely to make me learn the pattern and freely apply it on something better next time.

MT does a much better job of this than Duolingo, because the sentences aren't that weird. The reason I think MT works well is that even if it's not specific to a situation, you can still immediately "feel" the meaning.
e.g. I want it, but I don't have it.
It's a natural sentence that can be understood easily. Some weird sentences are visual enough that they're easily understood (maybe "the bear tried to eat my hat" or something) but much of the weirdness Duolingo gives me doesn't really mean anything to me, and it leaves me intellectualising the language and following a completely conscious process of manipulating form, rather than a process of connecting form and meaning intuitively.

If you look at how much is learned during an MT course, you can see how important this connection with natural meaning is -- no other course I've used has ever taught as much in as little time.

(P.S. "not only" is an odd phrase that still invokes the old "verb second" structure that other Germanic languages retain. In English this means inserting an auxiliary. "Not only do I like it, I even bought the company!" or somesuch.)

Thanks for the correction!
"not only the teacher was shouting all the time,she insisted on teaching us useless nonsense and not teaching me stuff I would have wanted to say." That's probably a better version.

It was the "not only" bit that needed revising: "not only was the teacher shouting all the time, ...".

[Random Review]

...which brings us back to correctness and correction. I'm all for it, but I just don't believe it can be done if the teacher doesn't know what the student is trying to say. I think I'm better than most at working it out, but when you have truly open opportunities to speak, what the students want to say is often several levels of complexity beyond what they're capable of.

That's why I'm such a big fan of... (not said this in a while)... Michel Thomas's approach. The teacher always knows what the student wants to say, and the student generally wants to say it. (Less so in the MT "method" courses. I never really wanted to say "Do you know where I can buy icons near here?" (RU) or "the ice-cream is delicious" (JA). Similarly, when I tried the Language Transfer stuff, I did feel I was being asked to say stuff that was pretty arbitrary and only included for expository reasons.) Of course, Thomas also prepares you to deal with grammatically complex language, which means you're more likely to be able to say what you actually want to say, rather than just trying to worm your way around it.

Yes, this is very true. We want to tell things beyond our capacity all the time.

There was a discussion some time ago, which discussed this as a very common source of mistakes and their fossilisazion. We learn the linguistic means to say something much much later than we need or want to say it. I would say the French subjunctive is a very common example, with many teachers and courses waiting a few years to introduce it, so the students actually using French get used to using indicative. It is not that hard to make this wrong assumption, as the subjunctive and indicative sound much less different in French than in Spanish (for example). It was hard to relearn it correctly. But this happens with lots and lots of issues. And I am not sure the very restrictive approach, like MT, which limits the things the students might want to say during the class (please correct me, if I am wrong)

Oh yes, it limits it. But it's basically a few days of intensive grammar cramming (the complete published audio material for any given language is pretty much equivalent to a one-week intensive residential course), with the assumption that vocab and phraseology will be easily picked up after that, although I've generally done further study rather than rely on exposure. I'm completely anti-Krashen at a beginner stage, but I do think that learning by exposure after MT would be possible.

This is the main reasons why I am much in favour of learning grammar rather fast (or in better words: without much postponing and beating around the bush). Even on not so useful examples. The contemporary idea that courses should directly teach us "useful" language is problematic, because vast majority of the learners won't want to say those sentences included, whichever sentences get selected. Learning the patterns is the key, so that we get freedom as fast as possible. So, I don't mind being taught stuff like the Duolingo weird sentences (I dislike other stuff about Duolingo). A funny and completely useless example is quite likely to make me learn the pattern and freely apply it on something better next time.

MT does a much better job of this than Duolingo, because the sentences aren't that weird. The reason I think MT works well is that even if it's not specific to a situation, you can still immediately "feel" the meaning.
e.g. I want it, but I don't have it.
It's a natural sentence that can be understood easily. Some weird sentences are visual enough that they're easily understood (maybe "the bear tried to eat my hat" or something) but much of the weirdness Duolingo gives me doesn't really mean anything to me, and it leaves me intellectualising the language and following a completely conscious process of manipulating form, rather than a process of connecting form and meaning intuitively.

If you look at how much is learned during an MT course, you can see how important this connection with natural meaning is -- no other course I've used has ever taught as much in as little time.

(P.S. "not only" is an odd phrase that still invokes the old "verb second" structure that other Germanic languages retain. In English this means inserting an auxiliary. "Not only do I like it, I even bought the company!" or somesuch.)

Thanks for the correction!
"not only the teacher was shouting all the time,she insisted on teaching us useless nonsense and not teaching me stuff I would have wanted to say." That's probably a better version.

It was the "not only" bit that needed revising: "not only was the teacher shouting all the time, ...".

I agree with you on this; but ironically enough, sometimes more meaning has its hazards.

I have been teaching Chinese kids how to read with phonics as part of my job and I have noticed just how well this works with beginners who know very little English. It some respects it has some MT-like aspects (break down the language into chunks that students can reassemble). I have also noticed that phonics classes for students even a mere 6 months further down the line are much harder to make effective: these students know some English and it's just so damn hard to stop them constantly trying to guess and instead actually apply rules. It's not just laziness; students with some English understandably don't like reading things that don't mean anything to them like some kind of performing monkey, so if they don't know a word, they almost can't help but guess words rather than apply decoding rules. I have literally heard student after student read "closet" as "clock", for example. Sometimes with long words you can hear several comical shifts in gear: w-a (wait, I know!) water, no wait, there's more, er, watermelon... doesn't seem quite right... w-a-sh (oh, I DO know this one after all!) washing machine!

On the other hand, beginning students who know almost no English quite enjoy decoding words that are meaningless to them... precisely because English is still all meaningless to them.

That said, even with beginners guessing is a problem with the graded readers. They never seem to be appropriately graded, so many teachers practice phonics for a while and then teach the students to read the readers, essentially forcing them to memorise words and get good at guessing. Why? Because they know that a phonics lesson has to have a reading component as a production phase, the readers are already on the course map (for use in practicing skills) and it impresses parents no end to see little Leo or Elsa reading a real book (that they don't understand in the slightest). Worse still, parents have no idea how reading is taught with phonics and complain when little Jacky or Apple brings home a booklet and can't read it, so teachers are in a tough position in that regard.

[Cainntear]

I have been teaching Chinese kids how to read with phonics as part of my job and I have noticed just how well this works with beginners who know very little English. It some respects it has some MT-like aspects (break down the language into chunks that students can reassemble). I have also noticed that phonics classes for students even a mere 6 months further down the line are much harder to make effective: these students know some English and it's just so damn hard to stop them constantly trying to guess and instead actually apply rules. It's not just laziness; students with some English understandably don't like reading things that don't mean anything to them like some kind of performing monkey, so if they don't know a word, they almost can't help but guess words rather than apply decoding rules. I have literally heard student after student read "closet" as "clock", for example. Sometimes with long words you can hear several comical shifts in gear: w-a (wait, I know!) water, no wait, there's more, er, watermelon... doesn't seem quite right... w-a-sh (oh, I DO know this one after all!) washing machine!

On the other hand, beginning students who know almost no English quite enjoy decoding words that are meaningless to them... precisely because English is still all meaningless to them.

The problem here isn't that they're learning a new language, it's that they're learning to read at the same time. Even if they're advanced in Chinese reading, the process of reading an alphabetical language is completely new to them, and part of the natural process of learning to read is applying knowledge of the language to support and scaffold their understanding of the written language. i.e. the "guessing" you're seeing is basically how kids learn to read naturally, and so is quite predictable.

I imagine you don't have much of a choice in how you teach, but the more you can make sure they're ready for the words before you see them, the better.

This might mean revising the words in spoken form in the lesson before showing them in the written form, or possibly even in the same lesson.

[Random Review]

I have been teaching Chinese kids how to read with phonics as part of my job and I have noticed just how well this works with beginners who know very little English. It some respects it has some MT-like aspects (break down the language into chunks that students can reassemble). I have also noticed that phonics classes for students even a mere 6 months further down the line are much harder to make effective: these students know some English and it's just so damn hard to stop them constantly trying to guess and instead actually apply rules. It's not just laziness; students with some English understandably don't like reading things that don't mean anything to them like some kind of performing monkey, so if they don't know a word, they almost can't help but guess words rather than apply decoding rules. I have literally heard student after student read "closet" as "clock", for example. Sometimes with long words you can hear several comical shifts in gear: w-a (wait, I know!) water, no wait, there's more, er, watermelon... doesn't seem quite right... w-a-sh (oh, I DO know this one after all!) washing machine!

On the other hand, beginning students who know almost no English quite enjoy decoding words that are meaningless to them... precisely because English is still all meaningless to them.

The problem here isn't that they're learning a new language, it's that they're learning to read at the same time. Even if they're advanced in Chinese reading, the process of reading an alphabetical language is completely new to them, and part of the natural process of learning to read is applying knowledge of the language to support and scaffold their understanding of the written language. i.e. the "guessing" you're seeing is basically how kids learn to read naturally, and so is quite predictable.

I imagine you don't have much of a choice in how you teach, but the more you can make sure they're ready for the words before you see them, the better.

This might mean revising the words in spoken form in the lesson before showing them in the written form, or possibly even in the same lesson.

In fact at this age they know pinyin*. I know what you mean, though, we do teach younger kids too and it's like you say (guessing between p and q, etc). It's a good point you make; but I think what I was trying to say above is still pretty valid.

As much as possible, I don't want them to know words in advance. I find they learn much better when they build up the words piece by piece following rules and it's hard to make them do that when they know the words.
With the pre-school kids who don't know pinyin, I think you are right and in fact we do teach phonics in conjunction with words (e.g. a flashcard with the word on one side and a picture on the other).

* as you might imagine we get some pinyin transfer errors like /u:/ in "bug" and "pin" as /pi:n/ for example; but curiously I have never seen them decode "cat" as /tsat/ or similar. It's like they already intuitively know it doesn't sound English (whereas phonologically 'boog" is in fact a perfectly possible English word). I still haven't figured out exactly what's going on there, because they transfer lots of other patterns.

[reineke]

Dixon, R.M.W.: Are some languages better than others?

"The book is divided into eleven chapters. Chapter 1 sets the scene: it provides a list of eight primary functions fulfilled in all languages spoken today, and this list is used as a kind of yardstick for evaluation in later chapters: “One language is better than another to the extent that it fulfils the primary functions of a language”(p. 7). Other subjects covered in this chapter include a discussion of what “better” means, the role of writing and the fundamental tasks of linguistics, namely description, explanation, prediction and evaluation

The author makes it clear from the outset where he locates himself: first, he regards linguistics as a natural science (p. 8) and, second, he maintains that a comparative evaluation of languages should be based on the functions languages serve: “One language is better than another to the extent that it fulfils the primary functions of a language”(p. 7).

Among the features “which should ideally be present in every language” (p. 213) there are case and gender. Dixon argues, for example, that it is definitely desirable that a language should include (grammatical) gender since it “can play a significant role in creating succinct discourse”(p. 81).

Many linguists will shy away from dealing with the question that forms the title of this book ‒being aware of all the social or psychological implications possibly associated with it; the answer volunteered may be routinely of the kind “Any language is as good, or as complex as any other”. It is the main merit of the present book to attempt what the author calls a scientific evaluation of this question."

Dixon, R.M.W.: Are some languages better than others? https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... han_others [accessed Mar 26 2018].