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At 04:53 PM 2/26/2001 -0600, Lesa Dill wrote:<br>
<br>
Mark Odegard: >>>And, yes. While every languages has its
internal changes, most language<br>
>>>changes seem to be driven by stressful contact with another
language.<br>
>>><br>
Mufwene: >> So?<br>
>>><br>
>>Sali.<br>
<br>
Lesa Dill: >I'd argue that a language like litters of kittens may have
multiple fathers.<br>
>The better metaphor is the polyploidy of plants. They aren't
just diploid<br>
>with two genetic progenitors. The genetics metaphor is really a
problem!<br>
>Language changes seem to be driven by stressful contact?? I'd argue
that one.<br>
>We are seeing drastic changes going on in many languages right now
(driven my<br>
>technology and the Internet). And from what I can see, they are
not the least<br>
>bit stressful. The notion of "stress" is also a
holdover from biology. How<br>
>does one stress a language? Maybe a speaker. I'm not even
sure of that.<br>
>Language change produces no toll on the "species" because
there is no species.<br>
>Sali, do you want to comment on how much stress the first generation
creole<br>
>speakers are under with their great language task?<br>
>Lesa<br>
>><br>
<font size=4>I've resisted selling my own approach here, because it
involves much more work than disputing the traditional view. I summarize
it in the first chapter of my book <font size=4><i>The Ecology of
language evolution</i><font size=4>, now in press. The chapter is posted
(minus the illustrations of "feature pool") at my website. What
you say is very sound and the polyploidic model on the plant or viral
model is the closest thing, although a linguistic species remains a
linguistic species, with transmission characteristics specific to itself
(despite sharing evolutionary properties with plant and parasitic species
in biology). For instance, imperfect replication is the default
characteristic of its features, contrary to the biological gene
transmission in which the default is perfect replication (otherwise
mutation is invoked). Variation in the way the population acquires and
replicates features has a lot to do with basic change at the population
level--but one must learn to deal with the relation of group selection to
individual selection, as they are not necessarily convergent. Group
selection calls for ecology, and that when language and dialect contact
too have important roles to play, etc. <br>
<br>
You are probably also right in placing
stress on speakers rather than on language. I suppose one of the problems
lies in assuming that languages have independent lives of their own. So a
history of a language that ignores how its speakers have interacted over
the relevant period is terribly flawed. The other dimension I am very
reluctant to get into here is whether brutality exerted on speakers
affects their minds' ability to acquire language--please IGNORE language
acquisition through the school system, which has created more confusion
in the literature than was really necessary. I'd better stop here.<br>
<br>
Sali.<br>
<br>
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<font color="#800000">**********************************************************<br>
Salikoko S.
Mufwene
</font><font color="#800080">s-mufwene@uchicago.edu<br>
</font><font color="#800000">University of
Chicago
</font><font color="#800080">773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924<br>
</font><font color="#800000">Department of Linguistics<br>
1010 East 59th Street<br>
Chicago, IL 60637<br>
</font><font color="#000000"><a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html" eudora="autourl">http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html</a><br>
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