Sum: term

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I am responding to what appears below. I gave a paper some time ago at a
Lacus forum that got published in which I spoke of the equicomplexity of
languages. The paper proposed the theory that all natural languages were
equally complex. The consequence is that any change that
introduces complication anywhere requires a compensatory simplification
elsewhere nad vice versa. A simple name for what is involved might be the
equicomplexity principle, but, as I see it, what is involved is a theory,
since the proposition is an assumption; I don't believe anyone is going to
prove that languages are equicomplex in the near future, but the
proposition can be used to explain the phenomena you have observed.
 
 
On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Larry Trask wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> A few days ago I posted a request for a term.  Once again, the
> phenomenon I wanted a name for was this: a change that leads to
> simplification in one domain often produces a simultaneous
> complication in another domain.
>
> The most familiar examples of this phenomenon, of course, involve
> phonological simplifications and morphological complications, but
> that's not the only possibility, as I perhaps should have pointed out
> in my original query.  For example, syntagmatic phonological
> simplifications can produce paradigmatic phonological complications,
> as when palatalization in palatalizing environments produces new
> marked segments, like the Czech fricative trill.  Then again,
> analogical leveling (morphological simplification) can produce new
> alternations in stems that formerly didn't alternate (morphological
> complication), as has happened in some varieties of Serbo-Croatian (if
> I'm still allowed to use that name).
>
> The motive for my query was this.  As many of you know, I am compiling
> a dictionary of historical and comparative linguistics.  Now, in
> recent years, we have coined a rather large number of terms in the
> field, and I've noticed that good names have been coined for a number
> of familiar phenomena for which we formerly had no names; examples are
> `actualization' (Timberlake), `metatypy' (Ross), `pandemic
> irregularity' (Blust), `exaptation' (Lass), and `phonogenesis'
> (Hopper), not to mention the memorable `morphanization' (Matisoff).
>
> But I haven't found a recognized name for the phenomenon I'm
> interested in here.  But, since the phenomenon, as Steven Schaufele
> has pointed out, is such a fundamental one in our field, it seems to
> me that we really ought to have a name for it.  Hence my query.
>
> Fifteen people replied, and the first thing to report is that there
> does indeed appear to be no recognized name for the phenomenon.
> Almost everyone had one or more suggestions to make, but no two people
> suggested the same term (though in one case two people came fairly
> close).  A couple of people suggested terms which they themselves had
> apparently used in print, but I guess those proposals haven't caught
> on yet.
>
> Anyway, here are the terms proposed, or most of them.  I omit a couple
> of totally facetious suggestions, and one or two which were so
> exceedingly long that I don't think they can be considered as terms.
> A couple of people, I think, thought that I was asking specifically
> for a label for the conversion of phonology into morphology, but in
> fact I have in mind something more general than that.
>
> BLINDNESS PRINCIPLE
> CODE SHIFT
> DIACHRONIC COMPENSATION
> EQUILIBRIUM
> HYDRA'S RAZOR
> LOCAL IMPROVEMENT
> LOCAL SIMPLIFICATION
> MARKEDNESS CONFLICT
> MORPHOLOGIZATION OF PHONOLOGICAL RULES
> NATURALNESS CONFLICT
> SCHLIMMBESSERUNG
> SIMPLEXIFICATION
> STURTEVANT'S PARADOX (unspecified variation on)
> TRADE-OFF
> TUNNEL VISION PRINCIPLE
>
> Right.  Now what do I do?  Call for a vote?  Organize a competition
> with five distinguished judges and a prize of two weeks in the PIE
> homeland of your choice?  Close my eyes and stick a pin?  Ask Roger
> Lass what the biologists call it?  Coin my own term and hope everybody
> buys the book and believes me?  Or should I just admit defeat and not
> include any term for this, on the not unreasonable ground that
> dictionaries shouldn't be including words that don't exist?
>
> Damned if I know.  But it *would* be nice if we had *some* name for
> this.  Otherwise, how can we persuade our students it's important if
> we haven't got a name for it?  I mean, I don't recall that so many
> Americans go hot and bothered about visiting ever more soldiers and
> bombs on the Vietnamese until somebody decided that what was happening
> was `escalation', and then suddenly escalation was a hot issue.
>
> Anyway, my thanks to Jacob Baltuch, Vit Bubenik, Miguel Carrasquer
> Vidal, John Costello, Guy Deutscher, Hans-Olav Engel, Ralf-Stefan
> Georg, Harold Koch, Bh. Krishnamurti, Paul Lloyd, Gary Miller, Steven
> Schaufele, Theo Vennemann, Benji Wald, and Roger Wright.
>
> (Hey -- how come no women?)
>
> Larry Trask
> COGS
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>