More parallels? Sub- and super-languages

[jess tauber]

When "world" languages (as some have called them) are examined, we often see extra goodies they have cumulated (extra large vocabularies, perhaps more registers, genres, grammatical elaborations, and so on). Conversely, moribund endangered languages appear to have undergone opposite trends (lost vocabulary, reduced grammatical possibilities, etc.).

Not surprisingly, speakers of endangered languages often find themselves absorbed other cultures- pressures created by living within those other cultures have led to the loss of content and structure in their languages. The 'world' languages, on the other hand, have benefitted from great expansion of speaker territory and material economies, often at the expense of weaker societies. Cheap labor seems often to derive from those whose languages are in trouble (at least in the country of residence, if not origin).

I was led to think about this after reading today an article (Researchers Find Smallest Cellular Genome http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061012184647.htm) about research which suggests that an insect endosymbiotic bacterium is slowly losing its genes to the host and headed towards organelle status. Organelles are semi-independent structures within cells that do jobs the cells could not do alone, or as efficiently (such as making ATP, photosynthesis, breaking down waste products, and so on). 

Research has shown that such structures for the most part evolved from free-living organisms that had their own full-sized genomes. In some cases organelles have been reduced to almost no genetic material left. What they can't make on their own they get from the host- usually chemical 'finished goods' of higher complexity.

So the bacteria end up running the mills, sweeping the floors, and other menial labor, losing their own 'language' and 'culture' in the process, ending up dependent on the larger host 'language' and 'culture', spoken in the big shining city of the nucleus, which maintains control of most of the economic decisions and resources. At the same time full integration is prevented- often the organelles have their own 'accent' (variants in the DNA coding paradigm). Seems like a bit of ghettoization going on.

Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net