Cladistic language concepts

[John Hewson]

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It seems to me that an amphibian would be a biological parallel to a
bilingual: an organism adapted to two different ecologies.
 
Entropy is also to be seen in language in the form of phonetic erosion.
French words, for example, normally retain only the stressed syllables of
their Latin forbears. Latin Augustum becomes Fr. aout, pronounced [u]. If
the initial syllable had a secondary stress, that would give a disyllabic
word; Late L. dia-domenica (the Lord's day) became Fr. dimanche, six
syllables to two. One way of countering this process was to use forms with
a diminutive suffix: instead of L. aurem (ear), auriculam to give Fr.
oreille, instead of L. apem (bee), apiculam to give Fr. abeille, thus
adding to the phonic material of the word.
 
The term negentropy was coined I think by Stephen Black in his very
interesting 1969 book _Body and Mind_. His idea was that the energies of
the universe, flowing into ultimate entropy, are harnessed for creative
and meaningful purposes in much the same way as we harness rivers to
create electricity. In his view all information is negentropic, his
favourite example being a key, that fits a lock and opens a door
(often replaced now with a card with computerized information on it). He
consequently conceived of all biological info such as DNA as negentropic.
Alongside the entropic forms of linguistic change we can also see the
negentropic forms, which have at times raised passionate arguments as to
how far linguistic change may be considered telic or purposeful. JH
 
 
 
John Hewson, FRSC                               tel: (709)737-8131
University Research Professor                   fax: (709)737-4000
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9