Re: Glenn wrote:

John W. Burgeson (johnburgeson@juno.com)
Thu, 22 Oct 1998 16:06:13 -0600

>>Concerning the animals, saying that you can't turn a chimp into a human
seems equivalent to me to those linguists who want to save the minor
languages around the world from extinction by not allowing their children
to learn more widespread languages. To prevent some member of a small
tribe speaking a minor language from bettering themselves seems
unethical.
Could the same be applied to a non-human species?
>>

I have no idea of an answer to your last question.

As for the ethics of your next-to-last question, at first glance I
agreed with you. Yet -- might it not be possible that there are some
concepts expressible in a minor language that are not expressible in any
major one!
If so -- they would "die" when the last speaker died. This
does not seem to me to be a "good."

Burgy

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