Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language
- Автор: Garvía Roberto
- Год: 2015
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language». Краткое содержание книги:
This institution, the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA), was finally established in 1924. IALA had two standing bodies: the Board of Directors and the General Advisory Committee. Whereas the board, mainly composed of scholars, was entrusted with conducting scientific research in cooperation with colleges and universities, the General Advisory Commit- tee was manned by philanthropists and influential people. But towering above them all was the personality and the initiative of Alice Vanderbilt.6
Following the advice of Cottrell, who as a scientist preferred to launch research into the question rather than endorse any of the existing artificial languages, IALA's goal was to "promote widespread study, discussion and pub- licity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language."7 Thus, and at least at its inception, IALA did not aim at the creation of a new language. It portrayed itself as a detached player and, rather than pass judg- ment on any of the existing languages, it confined itself, at least during its first years, to being a clearinghouse for ideas and research. To conduct re- search and confer IALA with scientific legitimacy, Vanderbilt needed to over- come the traditional reluctance of linguists toward artificial languages—still conceived of as a sort of Homunkulus or Frankensteins tongue—and obtain their cooperation.
The founding of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in the same year as IALA's facilitated Vanderbilt's goals. LSA members wanted to detach the study of language from the humanities in order to transform the field of lin- guistics into a scientific discipline. Since this goal fit with IALA's initial interests—research on comparative linguistics, the possibility of a universal grammar, and the linguistic prerequisites of a successful artificial language—it was able to establish a working relationship with American linguists, espe- cially after Vanderbilt, also a founding member of the LSA, promised to pro- vide generous research funds.
Research funds and grants began pouring in to East Coast colleges and universities, and both young and well-established linguists agreed to coop- erate with IALA's research division. One of them was the then relatively unknown American linguist Edward Sapir. He began working for IALA in 1925, and from 1930 to 1931 he was IALA's director of research. In 1931 he obtained a position at Yale University and curtailed his cooperation with Al- ice Vanderbilt, although he remained associated with IALA until his death. Sapir was one of the fathers of what was later known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a direct descendant of the Herderian philosophy of language that propounded linguistic relativism and the ultimate incommensurability of languages. That Sapir became engaged in the artificial language movement may look surprising. But Sapir's interest in the topic was sincere. He com- plained that the traditional hostility toward artificial languages was "bound up with all kinds of romantic notions . . . of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries [that a language] was . . . something like a tree that grew up without human care and could not be interfered with without spoil- ing the growth." He added, "I have been very much under the influence of this bad metaphor, myself [and] I am trying hard to now to get rid of it."8
Also, given that the main obstacle to international communication was "the great diversity of languages," Sapir asserted that it was "almost unavoid- able that the civilized world will adopt one language of intercommunication." We do not know if Sapir saw any contradiction between the hypothesis of the intimate connection between a language and the worldview of its native speakers, and the suggestion that a language can flourish in the absence of a community of native speakers. We do know, however, that his students have traditionally tried to gloss over and downplay his association with IALA.9 Like
Sapir, the former Idist Otto Jespersen was also enticed by Vanderbilt's "in- telligence, personal charm, and wealth" and was recruited to cooperate with IALA. In any case, IALA's appeal to linguists was uneven. Whereas linguists coming from multilingual Europe were more inclined to cooperate with IALA, American linguists remained skeptical.
IALA's original goal was to work out a consensus among artificial lan- guage supporters. This implied obtaining the cooperation of linguists to con- duct research on comparative semantics and tempering the mutual animosity between Idists and Esperantists, in the hope of aligning their interests with those of IALA. Thus, in 1925, and to break new ground, Vanderbilt invited the two camps to Geneva. Edgar de Wahl, who had just released his Occi- dental, and Otto Jespersen were also invited.
Vanderbilt primarily hoped to persuade Idists and Esperantists to call a truce. Married to a diplomat, she knew very well how to stage the discussion. For about a week, she lavishly hosted the contenders in her impressive hotel Beau Rivage and arranged separate dinners. Some proposals were exchanged, but the meeting was a fiasco. Relations between Idists and Esperantists were still too bitter.
An unexpected consequence of these conversations, though, was Jespers- en's decision to collect his cogitations and create his own language: Novial. This new contender was born in 1928, accompanied, as was by now custom- ary, with its own journal, Novialiste, and its own academy, the Lingue-Jurie del Novialistes, founded in 1937.10 Notwithstanding the creation of Novial— which by 1939 had only twelve registered speakers11—Jespersen continued to cooperate with IALA.
After the Beau Rivage fiasco, IALA decided to try a new persuasive tack. In 1930, it organized a two-week conference in Geneva. With Jespersen pre- siding, the conference brought together interested linguists and academics, representatives of Esperanto, Esperanto II (a reformed Esperanto created by the mathematician Rene de Saussure, brother of the linguist Ferdinand), Ido, Novial, Occidental, and Latino sine flexione. Expenses for travel and for ac- commodations in a first-class hotel for all attendees came from Vanderbilt's pocket.12 But this time, rather than seeking a compromise between rival proj- ects, Vanderbilt intended to co-opt European linguists into IALA's agenda. And to this extent, she was successfuclass="underline" the Second International Conference of Linguistics, held the following year in Geneva, gave IALA's research activi- ties on artificial languages a reserved vote of assent.13 Vanderbilt's next move was to establish a Committee for Agreement that should work out the long- desired compromise among competing rival languages. She had a back-up plan, however. Wanting a compromise, IALA would concentrate on "the formula- tion of a definitive constructed language."14 In 1936, representatives of the rival languages convened regularly, together with interested linguists and aca- demics. But, again, compromise proved impossible. Vanderbilt gave up and went ahead with her plan to create a new artificial language. Thus, rather than simplifying the scenario, IALA added anxiety and confusion by its decision to join the battle and introduce a new player—a battle that, as everybody understood, promised to be quite unbalanced, given Vanderbilt's wealth and largesse. But to the relief of Esperantists and Idists, IALA's language, Interlin- gua, only came to be after World War II, shortly after Vanderbilt died.15
With the IALA research department working on a new language, the Idists badly hit by their split in the mid-1920s, and Occidentalists and Novialists preying on the Idists and each other, it was not uncommon to read in the jour- nals of the artificial language movement appeals to put an end to this can- nibalisme interlinguistic, as the Novialist Per Albergh expressed it, and to reach a consensus to prevent Esperanto or, worse, English from winning the day. As an Occidentalist put it presciently, if this "mortal combat" continued, "the English language is going to triumph."16