From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Tue Sep  1 21:00:09 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 17:00:09 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <9807319046.AA904602373@casmail.calacademy.org>
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.170009.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
Dear Professor Ghiselin,
        I was thinking when I wrote that note how badly seals perform on
land compared to their speed and agility in the water. But I was also
thinking that a puffin was a good analogy for a trilingual: puffins are
excellent underwater swimmers. Unlike gannets, who dive from a height into
the water, puffins dive from the surface and pursue their prey. They nest
on land, and dig burrows to protect their young; as Jacques Cartier noted
on his first voyage to Canada, if you put your hand in the burrow "they
bite like dogs". A puffin can also trek across the ground much faster than
a penguin!
 
        Not all bilinguals are equally at home in both languages. In fact
the vast majority of Canadian bilinguals these days speak either French or
English as a mother tongue and the alternative as a second language. I
have often heard conversations on the street where one participant is
speaking French and the other English, each comprehending the other
perfectly. This is even more common in writing, especially between
university colleagues: I write in English to all my francophone friends
and they write back in French to me. There's also a lot of linguistic
literature on so-called code-switching, where bilinguals often switch back
and forth in mid sentence, since for most bilinguals some topics are more
easily dealt with in one language or the other. Anglophones in Quebec, for
example have their own different dialect for talking politics or
education, using either French terms or unrecognizable English calques of
French terms or phrases.
 
On learning a second language a bilingual has acquired the ability to
function in a second community where otherwise he would be "like a fish
out of water". I think the amphibian is a better analogy for the bilingual
that the hermaphrodite. I can speak French, but I only use that skill when
I am in a francophone community; I can also swim (a skill which I also
learned originally at school), but I only use that skill when I get into
the water. It seems that acquiring the ability to adapt to a different
milieu or medium is common to both. 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


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Sep  1 13:23:20 1998
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:23:20 EDT
Subject: Multiple syncope
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.092320.EDT.MAXW@COGS.SUSX.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
Do colleagues share my hunch that a syncope/apocope process (loss of
syllabic nucleus) cannot affect, at the same time, more than one
syllable in a foot? That is, for example,
 
        *'CVCVCV > 'CVC(C)
 
 
(It may be that `foot' is not always the correct domain for this
`constraint'.)
 
Of course, over time, successive syncope processes may remove several
nuclei (e.g. Latin uetulum > French /vjej/ `old').
 
Or, if you don't share my hunch, have you got examples where more than
one nucleus is lost from a foot as part of the same process?
 
I would also be glad to hear of references to relevant theoretical
discussions, or data.
 
Max Wheeler
 
___________________________________________________________________________
 
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu  Tue Sep  1 13:18:45 1998
From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:18:45 EDT
Subject: Re[4/6]: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <l03102845b2019775474a@[131.174.186.146]>
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.091845.EDT.DELANCEY@DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Michael Cysouw wrote:
 
> A central point in this comparison is what is concieved as an 'individual'
> (or 'unit' if you don't like to anthropomorphize). In linguistics there are
> two basic views on language around: either the *speaker* is seen as a
> unit/individual, or a *language* is seen as a unit/individual. Depending on
> which stance you take, you'll get differing analogies to biological
> concepts.
 
Language as individual makes little sense to me, but I think that speaker=
individual is clearly the most useful analogy.  Michael's observation that
utterances rather than languages or individual speakers are the units of
selection is correct, but of course this makes them parallel not to
individuals in biological evolution, but to genes.  They are indeed the
units upon which selection operates, in quite the same sense as genes,
rather than individuals, are in biology.  And this parallel works quite
well--not with utterances, but with constructions (i.e. morphemes,
words, and syntactic constructions), which are the building
blocks which make up the structure of a language system, just as
genes are the building blocks of a genotype.  Utterances,
which are actual entities whose structure is informed by the
underlying knowledge of constructions, are, on this model, not
genes but the expression of genes.
     We then have useful parallels to the notion of genotype vs.
phenotype--which ends up recalling, in I think a more useful form,
the "competence/performance" dichotomy between the representation
of a language in a speaker's mind and the actual linguistic forms
produced.
     As in biology, it is more useful for many purposes to think of
a population rather than a species.  That is, there is no abstract
"language" shared by all speakers; rather, there is a population of
interacting individuals whose underlying systems share a great deal
of structure--some but not all of which is probably essential for
interaction with other members of the population, and therefor in
a sense criterial for membership in the "species".
    There are drastic failures in the linguistic/biological parallel, such
as the fact that a single individual can be a native speaker of more than
one language.  But the overall parallels work neatly:  in gross
measure, replication is similar; the speaker acquires linguistic
structure from members of the previous generation.  (Can be more
or, theoretically, less than two such members, though).
     To me this seems like a framework within which we can think
about answers to Michael Ghiselin's question of Aug. 31:
 
>                One point that I still would like clarified is the
>           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
>           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>           language.
 
A basic ontological problem with all the human sciences is the nature
of constructs like "language", "culture", etc.  The individual nervous
systems in which these are represented are part of the physical world,
and in some sense, which someday we may understand, the representations
of language (for example) in these nervous systems is also an aspect of
the physical world.  But the abstract "language" which is "shared" by
all members of a speech community is not something which can be located
in the physical world--so, where and what IS it?  I think, in fact, it
is very much the same kind of thing as a species, which likewise does
not exist--what do exist are individuals and populations.
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Tue Sep  1 13:18:09 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:18:09 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.091809.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Prof. Hewson,
               An amphibian is generally a sort of compromise between
          two kinds of functional demands that allow it to switch back
          and forth between one and another habitat.  Penguins swim
          well but they waddle on land and otherwise do not do very
          well there.  Bilingual persons supposedly are adept at both
          tongues.
               Another possibility that comes to mind is
          hermaphroditic organisms.  They can function as either sex
          or both depending on the circumstance.  A lot of them are
          "sequential" hermaphrodites, switching from one role to
          another.  But there are simultaneous hermaphrodites in a
          fully functional sense: donating and receiving male gametes
          at the same time.  I suppose that bilingual persons mainly
          switch from one language to another but perhaps not
          entirely.  I am not sure whether such speculation is apt to
          lead anywhere.  But thanks.
          MG


From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Wed Sep  2 12:04:03 1998
From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 08:04:03 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <WED.2.SEP.1998.080403.EDT.BWALD@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
MG raises a difficult issue:
>               One point that I still would like clarified is the
>          relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>          language itself.
 
I think the frankest answer might be that linguists would like that to be
clarified as well.  They are almost invariably interested in
generalisations from individual speakers to groups of speakers of the
"same" language (or "same" dialect, etc.), or even to all speakers of all
languages (speakers = language "knowers", whatever you want to call them).
>From this perspective the least that I can say is that linguistics is
ultimately about approaching resolution of such issues -- and there is no
danger that you will get a definitive answer in the near future.  We're
still working on it in our various ways.  One strategy is to eliminate
certain a priori hypotheses, such as that the knowledge of any single
speaker can be identified with total knowledge of "the language", or even
that the total knowledge of all speakers exhaust the "possibilities" of the
language (or of "language").  I have to leave it at that for now.
 
MG continues:
 
The speaker is a part of a language
>          community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>          language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand,
>          speak, participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do
>          not call them parts of the language.
 
Right.  Because the speaker is part of the "language community", not of the
"language".  The "language community" is another difficult concept, for
reasons similar to why "the language" or "language" is/are.  What's
"English", for example?  And then, what's "language"?  We know some
properties, and are constantly in the process of discovering or debating
others, but we are not fololhardy enough to seriously attempt a definition
of the basic concept that motivates our field.  Isn't it the same for
"life" among biologists and such?  (bio = "life").  Aren't biologists
similar to linguists in trying to approach the problem of "life" by
studying the properties of "life" forms, without hoping to exhaust the
subject or seriously define its fundamental concept?
 
(Wouldn't we be unduly and even presumptuously limiting ourselves if we
offered definitions of our most fundamental concepts rather than leaving
them as problematic and subject to tacit, if somewhat inarticulate -- even
if vulnerable, agreement?)
 
Finally, MG brings in the concept of "culture" (a term that has both
"linguistic" and "biological" uses):
 
There are a whole
>          range of related problems with respect to culture in
>          general.  The way Tylor defined "culture" it includes
>          concrete artifacts.
 
I agree that the concepts "culture" and "language community" are related,
and share some similar problems.  In any case, for most "prehistoric
cultures" all we have are concrete artifacts.  If we would prefer to focus
on "culture" as something "soft", e.g., any given society's "solution" to
the problem of how to live, we still get a lot of ideas about that from how
members of that culture behave, and among those behaviors are the artifacts
they produce and/or use (or at least have some understanding of the use
of).  Again, a "language community" is interesting in how it reflects the
use of language, through a salient degree of uniformity or orderly
differentiation, to circumscribe a culture.  Apart from various lexical
semantic domains (e.g., kinship systems, lexical systems of beliefs, social
activities, social relations, artifacts...), it remains problematic what
inferences we can make about a culture simply from the its degree of
orderly differentiation or uniformity of language use.  (Indeed, we cannot
recognise the "orderliness" of linguistic variability within a culture
until we know what social features of the culture it correlates with.
However, given a number of empirical studies, we may have some expectations
about what social correlates to look for, when we observe a number of
individual speakers who we have some reason to assume are products of the
"same" culture.)  I guess about the degree of uniformity and/or variability
in a culture and a language, we have to tease out inferences about its age
and its complexity (which may interact).  Thus, when we compare the
variability in "American" and "British" English, we are tempted to ascribe
the "greater" variability of the latter to its age.  But if we remember to
include such varieites as African American English in "American English"
(as a product of its development within an American social context --
something that excludes inclusion of Caribbean English in "British
English"), then we greatly increase our view of variability of "American
English", but must account for it in terms of "complexity" of American
"culture", rather than "age" relative to British culture.


From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Wed Sep  2 20:15:18 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 16:15:18 EDT
Subject: Re[4/6]: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980831161915.5144B-100000@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.2.SEP.1998.161518.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Tue, 1 Sep 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote:
 
>  Michael Ghiselin's question of Aug. 31:
>
> >                One point that I still would like clarified is the
> >           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
> >           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
> >           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
> >           language.
>
> A basic ontological problem with all the human sciences is the nature
> of constructs like "language", "culture", etc.  The individual nervous
> systems in which these are represented are part of the physical world,
> and in some sense, which someday we may understand, the representations
> of language (for example) in these nervous systems is also an aspect of
> the physical world.  But the abstract "language" which is "shared" by
> all members of a speech community is not something which can be located
> in the physical world--so, where and what IS it?  I think, in fact, it
> is very much the same kind of thing as a species, which likewise does
> not exist--what do exist are individuals and populations.
 
It is useful to think of a language (Saussure's langue) as a means of
production, and the discourse that vibrates on the air waves (Saussure's
parole) as the product. Only the former is a permanent possession of the
native speaker, and it has a location in the physical world as the brain
surgeons well know. In fact it can be damaged by physical intervention, by
brain trauma. The means of production is finite (a language) whereas the
product is unlimited (language, not a language).
 
Is the speech community an abstraction or something concrete? To start to
answer that question it is useful to first decide if there is any
difference between a brick wall and a pile of bricks with a bag of cement.
The wall differs in that it is an alignment that can form a barrier or a
support, a physical presence that a random pile of bricks lacks.
 
A community language is also an alignment of sorts: individuals adapt
their "means of production" to community norms. This type of alignment can
also be a barrier to outsiders (remember the shibboleth), and a support
for community projects that otherwise might be difficult if not impossible
to achieve. And a speech community can also be destroyed by physical
intervention: you simply kill off the appropriate individuals just as the
brain surgeon tries to excise the cells with lesions in brain surgery, and
not touch the healthy cells.
 
The Bloomfieldians, because they were so influenced by positivism, left us
with the naive idea that what was not concrete was abstract. I think the
image of the brick wall shows that reality is much more subtle. There are
all kinds of structures and substructures that are not "concrete" but
every bit as much a part of the real world (I was tempted to write "real")
as the keyboard that my fingers are pounding. I prefer to keep the term
_abstract_ for mental constructs that are purely imaginary, like unreal
numbers in mathematics.
 
I sometimes think however that the Bloomfieldians did us a favour by
making such a mess of things that we really have to start again at the
beginning...
 
 
 
 
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


From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw  Thu Sep  3 11:39:25 1998
From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 07:39:25 EDT
Subject: where is language located? (wrt: cladistic linguistics discussion)
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.073925.EDT.FCOSW5@MBM1.SCU.EDU.TW>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
A few days ago, Dr. Ghiselin raised the following question:
 
> One point that I still would like clarified is the relationship between
> the speaker of the language and the language itself.  The speaker is
> part of a language community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts
> of the language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand, speak,
> participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do not call them
> parts of the language.  There are a whole range of related problems
> with respect to culture in general.
 
This (very valid) question brings up, to my mind, a paradox that i
routinely inflict on my sophomores in my introductory-survey course in
general linguistics: In one sense, a given language can be regarded as
residing in, and a property of, an individual human brain.  After all,
it's within our own brains that we store (in some form or other) the
vocabulary items and grammatical patterns that we use when we speak,
write, or interpret what someone else has said or written.  But in
another sense, a given language resides in and is the property of a
social community, since the language exists by virtue of and is defined
by the consensus of the community that uses it.
 
To be specific: I am a native/fluent speaker of English.  This means,
among other things, that i have inside my brain (somehow) adequate
knowledge of a few tens of thousands of English words and of a fairly
complete range of English grammatical patterns, ready to be used at the
drop of a hat; i rarely need to refer to anything outside my own brain
to use the English language, and in that sense the English language is
fully alive and contained inside my brain.
 
On the other hand, the English language that lives inside my brain is
almost fully defined by the consensus of the English-speaking community
to which i belong.  Yes, i've got a few idiosyncracies (mostly involving
a handful of lexical and orthographic preferences), but i'm justified in
calling myself an English-speaker -- in identifying the language i'm
using right now as `English' -- by the potential ability of appealing to
a large community that agrees to assign that label to this particular
set of vocabulary items and grammatical patterns.
 
In other words (as i point out to my students), we can look at the
phenomenon of human language from (at least) two different perspectives:
as a psychological phenomenon, whereby a language can be said to reside
in and be the property of each individual human brain; and as a
sociological phenomenon, whereby a language can be said to be defined by
the consensus of a community.  And both perspectives are valuable,
though they can occasionally be incompatible.  I'm a big believer in the
scientific value of paradox and dialectics.
 
Which brings us back to the original issue raised by Dr. Ghiselin: Is it
preferable to regard languages as historically organized in terms of
(cladistic) glossogenetic descent, in which each language is identified
as being derived from some single (in principle) identifiable earlier
language (which in turn is of course similarly derivable), or in some
other fashion?  My short answer would be: Yes, within reason.  Meaning,
Yes, most languages (leaving aside for the moment pidgins, creoles, and
other examples of `Mischsprachen' mentioned by Larry Trask in his
excellent posting of a month ago) can fruitfully be viewed in terms of a
cladistic or quasi-cladistic lineage leading back from any given
language to a single ancestor at at particular point in time.  But
*certain* alternative perspectives are also valuable, most notably not
only the kinds of perspectives that have been developed in pidgin &
creole studies but the concepts developed by Weinreich, Masica, etc. in
linguistic convergence and areal studies.
 
Responsible linguistic research needs to make use of all of these
perspectives more or less in tandem, just as it needs to recognize that
any given language is simultaneously a psychological and a sociological
phenomenon.  I suspect a good biological analogy might be the dichotomy
(and fruitful interaction) of evolutionary and ecological perspectives
on living creatures.
 
Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
 
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
 
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw
 
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html
 
 
 
        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
 
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de  Thu Sep  3 11:39:47 1998
From: a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de (agnes korn)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 07:39:47 EDT
Subject: titus
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.073947.EDT.A.KORN@EM.UNIFRANKFURT.DE>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
TITUS, the Frankfurt-based server of material related to Indo-European
studies, has been refashioned and updated (new adresses, courses,
studies programs, research projects...):
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de


From a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de  Thu Sep  3 19:31:16 1998
From: a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de (agnes korn)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 15:31:16 EDT
Subject: titus
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.153116.EDT.A.KORN@EM.UNIFRANKFURT.DE>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Paul Hopper,
TITUS-members are those who contribute e.g. texts or lexical material to
the TITUS-database. Anyone wishing to offer material for joint use is
invited to contact Jost Gippert:
gippert at em.uni-frankfurt.de
Yours
Agnes Korn
 
 
Paul J Hopper wrote:
 
> Thanks, Agnes Korn, for the information about Titus, the Indo-European
> data base. HISTLING-ers should be aware that some of the data can only
> be downloaded by TITUS members.
> Question: How does one become a TITUS member?
>
> Paul Hopper


From ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu  Thu Sep  3 19:29:48 1998
From: ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul J Hopper)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 15:29:48 EDT
Subject: titus
In-Reply-To: <35EE630B.7F9F2F6C@em.uni-frankfurt.de>
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.152948.EDT.PH1U@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Thanks, Agnes Korn, for the information about Titus, the Indo-European
data base. HISTLING-ers should be aware that some of the data can only
be downloaded by TITUS members.
Question: How does one become a TITUS member?
 
Paul Hopper


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:05:25 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:05:25 EDT
Subject: where is language located? (wrt: cladistic linguistics discu
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080525.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Steven,
               Thank you for addressing my metaphysical question,
          which you recast in somewhat different terms, by asking
          where a language resides.
               The answer that you gave can be compared to asking
          where genes reside.  We say that each and every organism has
          genes in its chromosomes.  The chromosomes and the genes are
          parts of the individual organisms.  Each diploid organism
          has two sets of these genes, each set being a genome in the
          strict sense.  Each organism is a part of a species.  Each
          gene is a part of a gene-pool.  The gene pool, like the
          species, is a supra-organismal, or populational whole.
          Analogizing with language, each organism has a version of a
          language, which is its idiolect, but the language proper is
          a higher-level entity.
               I see nothing in principle incompatible or paradoxical
          about this complexity, but the situation is such that it is
          apt to be confusing.  To be metaphysically precise I would
          say that the possession of a language is the property of an
          organism and a society, rather than that it is a property
          of either.  It does not seem to me that a language, or a
          gene, is a property.  But what is it?
               Be this as it may, I also see nothing incompatible
          about the diachronic and the synchronic perspective upon an
          evolving supra-organismal whole, any more than I see
          anything incompatible about a diachronic and a synchronic
          perspective upon a person.  Perspectives can be misleading,
          but they are not false in the sense that a fallacious
          argument or a false premise is.  The problem arises when we
          take our perspective and use it as a basis for an erroneous
          conception of things.  If a language is treated as if it
          were a class rather than a whole, then the very ability for
          it to change becomes problematic in the extreme.  Languages
          as classes certainly are incompatible with languages as
          individuals (wholes) and I think that your comments help to
          clarify that.  Thank you very much.
          Best,
          Mike


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:05:46 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:05:46 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080546.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear bwald
               (I'm sorry I don't know your name, only your address!)
               Before reading your message I sent a long one to Steven
          Schaufele about the relationship in question.  It may have
          helped.  And if linguists are interested in that sort of
          issue I am very pleased to be able to discuss such matters
          with them.
               You are quite right about the biologists' problem with
          "life" and the linguists' problem with "language."  These
          entities in the broadest sense originated once and only once
          in the history of the world.  All organisms and lineages
          thereof with which we are familiar have a common ancestor,
          and the capacity for language is the property of a single
          species.  Life in that sense and language in that sense are
          individuals.  A lot of their properties must be due to
          historical accident, or contingency.  If we were able to
          study similar entities that have evolved on different
          planets, we might be able to come up with a definition of
          some class of life-like entities.  Likewise with
          language-like entities that have no common ancestry.  In
          other words, defining life or language in that sense is
          hindered by our familiarity with a class that has but a
          single instance.
               It is not quite that bad, because when we study
          entities her on earth we find lots of species, and
          species-like things, which allow us to come up with a
          generalization that amounts to a definition of classes of
          such things.  So we can define the class of species, and the
          class of languages, even though Homo sapiens and French have
          no definitions strictly speaking.  And we can define a class
          that includes both the species and the language.  All
          species and all languages are lineages etc.
               I hope this metaphysics is not too tedious, but it
          shows I think the importance of studying such parallels in
          clarifying our thinking about such matters.
          Best,
          Mike Ghiselin


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:06:08 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:06:08 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080608.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Professor Hewson,
               I am a bit puzzled by the definition of bilinguality
          though it is a bit far from the original topic of lineages
          and such.  As I had understood it, bilingual persons are
          supposed to be equally adept at two languages, not just to
          be fluent in both.  And are not the typical bilinguals
          persons who say, learn one language from one parent, the
          other from another?  I remember some very interesting
          discussion about such matters from Els Oksar when both of us
          were in Berlin a few years ago.
               Switching makes sense for reasons you suggest.
          However, we switch from one jargon to another, and I am
          wondering how much of what you mention is just that.  Mixing
          jargons can be sort of fun, if perhaps sometimes offensive:
          Like the dog or bitch returneth to his or her vomit....
               Forgive me.  It is late in the day and I really must go
          home, but thanks for the interesting comments.
          Sincerely,
          Michael Ghiselin


From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Sat Sep  5 19:08:42 1998
From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald)
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 15:08:42 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <SAT.5.SEP.1998.150842.EDT.BWALD@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
MG writes:
 
>               (I'm sorry I don't know your name, only your address!)
 
        Benji Wald.
 
>               Before reading your message I sent a long one to Steven
>          Schaufele about the relationship in question.  It may have
>          helped.  And if linguists are interested in that sort of
>          issue I am very pleased to be able to discuss such matters
>          with them.
 
I was relieved that Steven and some others gave you Saussure's position on
"langue" and "parole", as it relates to your question about the general
view of linguists on the issue of the relation between speaker and
"language".  I didn't want to go into the detail and various
interpretations.
 
>               You are quite right about the biologists' problem with
>          "life" and the linguists' problem with "language."  These
>          entities in the broadest sense originated once and only once
>          in the history of the world.  All organisms and lineages
>          thereof with which we are familiar have a common ancestor,
>          and the capacity for language is the property of a single
>          species.  Life in that sense and language in that sense are
>          individuals.
 
It remains moot whether all languages have a common ancestor.  However, if
we take the concept of "language" at its most fundamental, as the "innate"
(pre-programmed) ability to acquire any human language that has ever
existed as a first language, I guess there's no harm in making the
assumption that that ability derives from a crucial innovation in the
hominid line of evolution shared by all subsequent "humans" (whether or not
that innovation was limited to language, as innatists assume, or had a more
general nature).  We linguists have argued amongst ourselves whether that
necessarily means that *implementation* of that ability by creating
observable languages happened only once or several times (within a short
period of time, let's say, in different location) -- something like Newton
and Leibniz coming up with the calculus more or less independently (let's
give Leibniz some credit, although not as much as he felt forced to claim,
given that his knowledge of some of Newton's early work probably helped him
develop what Newton concealed -- and even in a form that has been accepted
as more convenient than Newton's).
 
NB. the difference between "ability" and "implementation" of that ability
seems clear, since, if I understand correctly, humans sociopathically
isolated at birth from normal social contact with other humans, have the
ability but don't implement it -- and, due to the relation of innate
language ability to various other maturational processes -- cannot
implement that ability to the extent that people normally socialised do, if
they are exposed to implementation (by others) after a certain (critical)
period of organic development.
 
A lot of their properties must be due to
>          historical accident, or contingency.
 
Because of what I said above, that is contentious.  However, most linguists
are aware of this issue and have to deal with it one way or other in
seeking linguistic universals.  Generally, they have no choice but to go on
the basis of empirical data.  If we can't agree on whether all observable
*particular* languages descend from one original *particular* language,
then we can't agree whether or not a common descent has limited the
considerable variety we do observe from a much greater *possible* variety.
Some linguists might even be inconsistent by supposing (even hoping -- for
whatever reason) that all languages are ultimately descended from some
*particular* original language, but by still insisting that the variety we
observe can safely delimit the possible variation in human language.  It is
not really all that harmful to the field, because the two considerations
never coexist in the same research project.  Anyway, strong hypotheses
about universals on the basis of observable language variation has proven
challenging and vulnerable enough, without having to worry about whether
possible but unobserved/observable languages would disprove them.
 
NB.  Virtually all linguists are excited when a "new" language is
"discovered".  However, that hardly ever happens anymore, as opposed to
dissemination of relevant information about a language which was already
known to some experts but had not yet become a matter of general knowledge
among linguists.  Linguists are much more concerned about the continuing
disappearance/cessation of languages that have not yet been (and never can
be) completely mined for their relevance to linguistic theory.
 
If we were able to
>          study similar entities that have evolved on different
>          planets, we might be able to come up with a definition of
>          some class of life-like entities.  Likewise with
>          language-like entities that have no common ancestry.  In
>          other words, defining life or language in that sense is
>          hindered by our familiarity with a class that has but a
>          single instance.
 
Linguists have (probably) always dreamed about this.  Few linguists are
naive enough to seriously expect that "human" language (or the capacity for
it) has evolved anywhere else in the universe -- but that does not hold for
the vaguer notion of "beings with superior intelligence", something that is
hard (actually *impossible*) for us to imagine without it having relevance
to human language.
 
NB.  Since we're dealing with science fiction, let's not worry about what
"superior intelligence" is supposed to mean, or how we could recognise it,
or whether it means "superior TO us" or "superior LIKE us", etc.
 
>               It is not quite that bad, because when we study
>          entities her on earth we find lots of species, and
>          species-like things, which allow us to come up with a
>          generalization that amounts to a definition of classes of
>          such things.
 
        Yeah, like I was saying above.
 
So we can define the class of species, and the
>          class of languages, even though Homo sapiens and French have
>          no definitions strictly speaking.  And we can define a class
>          that includes both the species and the language.  All
>          species and all languages are lineages etc.
 
Generally speaking, that's true for our assumptions about languages.  One
thing I'm not sure about is whether human beings raised in a social context
but without language, say, a set of congenitally deaf children, would
develop spontaneously a (sign) language -- in which case, the language
would have no lineage.  Innatists like Chomsky have suggested such a thing,
and I think some empirical studies of some deaf communities have proposed
such a development -- but I'm not well enough versed in such studies to
know whether or how intervention in such communities of speakers of
languages with lineages queers conclusions about spontaneous implementation
of language abilities under such circumstances.
 
NB.  It's not quite clear to me what the parallelism between prosody in
spoken language and facial gestures in sign language (vs. phonological
structure of words in spoken languages parallel to hand gestures in sign
languages) suggests about such issues.   (What does the difference between
word order in adjacent spoken languages and sign order in sign language
suggest?  I don't know what the conventional wisdom of sign language
experts is for this issue -- or if there is one.)
 
>               I hope this metaphysics is not too tedious, but it
>          shows I think the importance of studying such parallels in
>          clarifying our thinking about such matters.
 
I'm not really reacting to the issues on a metaphysical level, but in terms
of the empirical basis for such speculations.   --  Benji


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Mon Sep  7 18:51:43 1998
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 14:51:43 EDT
Subject: hello, IE websites
Message-ID: <MON.7.SEP.1998.145143.EDT.CJUSTUS@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Dorothy,
 
>From the exchange on Titus, it occurred to me that you, if not historical
linguists generally, might want to know about our IE website, if you don't
already:
 
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/lrc
 
We are still getting our bearings, stymied in our original goals of making
hard to find articles available on request by copyright restrictions. We
are also working out issue of font display and database organization, among
other things. Right now we are slowly getting Lehmann's out-of-print READER
up under our 'Online Texts' rubric, under the IE Documentation Center.
 
We want to make this a useful resource. Any and all comments welcome,
 
Carol


From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp  Tue Sep  8 13:22:20 1998
From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 09:22:20 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.8.SEP.1998.092220.EDT.>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this list.
Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as many
of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many of
the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and ill-defined
as the foundational concepts in linguistics. It is also nice to have
someone outside the field, particularly a biologist, raising the
important issue of the ontology of language.
 
    As I see  it, linguistics since its inception in the nineteenth
century, has been defined not so much by a set of problems or a class of
phenomena to be explained, or even by a methodological approach, but
rather by the strange motto "Linguistics must be made a (natural)
science!" That is, to begin with, there was a desire to break with the
tradition of studying language within the medieval curriculum of
grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Two of the most influential research
programs in linguistics, the Neo-grammarian in the late nineteenth
century and Generative Grammar in the mid-twentieth embraced this motto
by asserting strong connections between linguistics and biology. The
neo-grammarian family tree model asserts, in effect if not explicitly,
that language is an organism independent of its speakers.  The
generative model asserts that language is a part of an organism, an
organ, like the hand or the liver.
 
    Beside the fact that these two models are logically incompatible (if
the first model is acurrate, then language change must be due to
mutation and speciation motivated by selectional pressures, if the
second correct then the locus for this change must be the human organism
itself-- hence language must be due to mutation and speciation within
the human race, which is empirically false), attempts to impose
biological models on language study have had the paradoxical effect of
making linguistics less empirical, hence less 'scientific'-- by a priori
limiting the types of data deemed worthy of consideration as well as the
types of hypotheses which might be proposed.
 
    Thus the traditional position  in historical linguistics is that
'genetic' relationships between languages are somehow real and
important, while relationships due to contact is mere noise. It has
taken a long time for linguists to accept the idea that contact
relationships are also subject to regularities which can be rigorously
modeled.  But really there are no genetic relationships. All
similarities between languages are based on contact (since an infant's
first language is the language of those who raise it, not necessarily
its biological parents), and so-called 'genetic' relationships simply
represent one extreme on a continuum of contact.
 
    The faults of generativists in this regard are even more egregious.
At one dark point it was widely asserted that it was a waste of time for
linguistics to study languages, since universals of language could be
directly intuited through introspection of one's own native language.
(Sort of like, one doesn't have to dissect thousands of cadavers to
understand the principles of anatomy-- one will do). Generalizations
proposed on the basis of data from a variety of languages could be
dismissed as mere facts about langauges which happen to be statistically
true-- as opposed to insights about the 'language faculty' which were
necessarily true. This has all changed now. Generative grammar in its
current form is largely a set of reactions to discoveries made by
empirically oriented schools. Optimality Theory is a response to
functionalism, Principles-and-Parameters a response to typology. What
has remained constant is that generativism still allows only one class
of explanation-- a genetic or biological one. Whatever universal
patterns in language structure are discovered, these are assumed
necessarily to be features of the innate human language ability, and the
ability itself is thought of as a body of knowledge of these strutures.
Functional explanations (economy or efficiency of communication) or
material ones (limitations on vocal/aural apparatus, or on memory) are
ruled out a priori as unworthy or uninteresting.
 
    In short I am highly sceptical of the way in which biological
analogies have been used in linguistics.  But of course I don't blame
biologists for this. The ultimate problem, as Dr. Ghesiln has hit upon,
is the ontology of language, that is to say, what IS it? In asking this
question to a bunch of linguists, our colleague is soon to discover, if
he hasn't already, that he has stumbled in among, not a group of sober
specialists, but a crowd of blind beggars arguing angrily about the
nature of an elephant.
 
    Well, here I will foolishly join this congress of the blind by
offering my own minority opinion: Language, as I see it (or as I grope
it), is neither an organ nor an organism, but a cultural artifact or a
tool. Our ability to learn, to use, even possibly to construct from
nothing this tool is due to genetically determined neurological
abilities unique to humans.  But the structural properties of the tool
are independent of the neurological structures which make it possible to
learn or use the tool. People have an innate ability, beyond that of
other animals, to build dwellings and structures of various types, and
these structures tend to have certain common structural properties-- for
example, a roof, something to support the roof. These properties can be
described, and 'explained' to some degree in functional (to keep the
rain out) and physical (gravity) terms.  The ability to build the
structure in the first place is rooted in the brain and is a product of
evolution. The question is, how does the genetic ability to construct an
artifact relate to the general or universal properties of the artifact.
It seems odd to me to assert, as most linguists do, that these things
are simply identical-- to assume in effect that the ability to build
things is encoded in the brain as innate knowledge of a set of universal
structural properties of buildings (the roof principle, the support
principle).  I conclude that analysis of structural properties of the
artifact will not necessarily yield any insight into the neurological
structures which construct or control the artifact, nor will knowledge
of the neurological structures necessarily provide a complete
explanation of the structural properties of the artifact (since
functional and material factors may also be relevant).
 
    At the risk of introducing yet another false language/biology
analogy, I'll close with a question. Language is possibly more analogous
to anthills, beehives, and birds' nest, than it is to ants, bees, or
birds. How do biologists now conceive the relationship between the
structural properties of beehives and the neurological structure of
bees? Do ants and bees have little blueprints in their ganglia? Is there
variation and change in the structure of beehives and anthills? If so,
can this be described in terms of selectional pressures, and, if so, is
this independent of mutation and speciation of the organisms involved,
or does it necessarily go in tandem with it?
 
-RR
 
Ghiselin, Michael wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original
> message----------------------------
>                Thanks for your very thoughtful commentary.  What you
>           say points out the fact that when we start asking what some
>           of these fundamental units are, they become increasingly
>           problematic; and when we try to compare across kinds of
>           systems the parallels are evident, but they too are
>           problematic.
>                The problems of what a species is and of what a
>           language is are not unusual.  Indeed I would be surprised to
>
>           find a theoretical term in any science that is not hard to
>           define in a way that pleases all the practitioners.  Small
>           wonder then, that we cannot easily find exact parallels
>           between the fundamental units of interest to linguists and
>           to biologists.  We can say that there are phonemes, words
>           etc., and we can say that there are nucleotide pairs ...,
>           but what we are looking at is hierarchical structure without
>
>           exact functional correspondence.  Geneticists do not agree
>           as to what a gene is, though they work with them and talk
>           about them all the time.
>                One point that I still would like clarified is the
>           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
>           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>           language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand,
>           speak, participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do
>
>           not call them parts of the language.  There are a whole
>           range of related problems with respect to culture in
>           general.  The way Tylor defined "culture" it includes
>           concrete artifacts.  There must be an extensive literature
>           on such issues.  But such material as I have read (including
>
>           the 1952 review by Kroeber and Kluckhohn) does not really
>           face up to the ontological issues.
>           MG
 
 
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan


From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk  Mon Sep 14 15:23:07 1998
From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 11:23:07 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <35F55B07.C394295@fs.tufs.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <MON.14.SEP.1998.112307.EDT.ROGER.WRIGHT@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
>    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this list.
>Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as many
>of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many of
>the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and ill-defined
>as the foundational concepts in linguistics.
 
        The great value of these interesting discussions has been
in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that the
analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
seriously.
        It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't really
"structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
                                                        RW


From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp  Tue Sep 15 13:52:23 1998
From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 09:52:23 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.15.SEP.1998.095223.EDT.>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Roger Wright wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original
> message----------------------------
>
> >    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this
> list.
> >Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as
> many
> >of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many
> of
> >the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and
> ill-defined
> >as the foundational concepts in linguistics.
>
>         The great value of these interesting discussions has been
> in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that
> the
> analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
> seriously.
>         It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
> construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't
> really
> "structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
>                                                         RW
 
    I hadn't really thought of the construction industry, but I like the
analogy now that you mention it, maybe because I live in the country
with the largest public works budget in the world.  Linguistics has
always sought prestige through analogies with other fields, and now that
science has lost some of its lustre...
    Of course we always have to try to avoid getting trapped in  our
conceptual frameworks.  But I must admit I can't really see how one can
escape talking about language as a structure. Any theory which assumes
the existence in a language of subcategories (such as phonemes, or parts
of speech) and relationships between them (such as constraints on word
order, or paradigmatic contrasts) is assuming that language is a
strucuture.  It is hard for me to see how we can abandon this approach
and still have anything to say about the formal properties of languages.
Of course I am strongly sympathetic with the view that language isn't
ONLY a structure. There are things to be said about language and
cognition, language and communication, which perhaps can be said without
reference to form or structure.
    How about in anthropology, are structuralist approaches to
non-material culture still prominent, or has a better way been found?
 
-RR
 
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan


From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Wed Sep 16 10:42:23 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 06:42:23 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980914141214.6892H-100000@uxa.liv.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.16.SEP.1998.064223.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Roger Wright wrote:
 
>         The great value of these interesting discussions has been
> in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that the
> analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
> seriously.
>         It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
> construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't really
> "structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
 
Agreed. Structures are entities that are created from parts that fit
together, parts that may have varying degrees of pre-fabrication. A
shelter in the woods has to be made from raw materials, whereas a house
includes all kinds of paradigmatic elements such as doors, windows, sinks,
bricks, 2 x 4's, shingles, etc.
 
Sentences are structures, and some languages have more pre-fabrication of
sentence elements than others.
 
The definition of a language as a set of sentences, which Bloomfield took
from the early Wittgenstein (in the _Tractatus_ (1919), heading 4.001) and
included in his 1926 `Set of Postulates', is demonstrably false: no child
learning a language learns a set of sentences. In fact languages don't
have sentences as Saussure pointed out long ago (CLG p.172: "la phrase ...
appartient a la parole, non a la langue"). Bloomfield's definition is
continued in Chomsky's work. Originally it was Chomsky's only definition
of a language (Syntactic Structures p.13); today the set of sentences
(utterances, actually, in Bloomfield) is Chomsky's E-language.
 
We use our languages, with all their paradigmatic possibilities, to create
sentences. A language has permanence, whereas a sentence does not.
 
The Prague School, and also Meillet, both influenced by Saussure, defined
a language as a system of systems. It was the definition that Jakobson
used throughout his lifetime. It would be interesting to determine what is
the difference between a system and a structure. 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


From resnik at umiacs.umd.edu  Wed Sep 16 10:45:07 1998
From: resnik at umiacs.umd.edu (Philip Resnik)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 06:45:07 EDT
Subject: Univ of Maryland Undergraduate Essay Prize in Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.16.SEP.1998.064507.EDT.RESNIK@UMIACS.UMD.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
  [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement.]
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY PRIZE IN LINGUISTICS
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
The University of Maryland Department of Linguistics is pleased to
announce the 1998 University of Maryland Undergraduate Essay Prize in
Linguistics, an international competition.
 
The prize of $1000 will be awarded for the best undergraduate student
essay on a topic in linguistics, and the winning essay will be
published in the 1999 University of Maryland Working Papers in
Linguistics.
 
Submissions may be in the areas of computational linguistics, formal
semantics, language acquisition, language change, lexical semantics,
neurolinguistics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and formal syntax.
 
The deadline for submissions is November 3, 1998.
 
Essay competition rules are as follows:
 
  Eligibility.
 
    Applicants must at the time of submission be enrolled at least half
    time in an undergraduate program of study leading to a bachelor's
    degree or equivalent, and must not already possess any degree in
    linguistics.  Essays should have been written within the previous or
    current academic year, and must represent the original work of
    the applicant.  Previously published essays will not be considered
    for the award.  Current and former students of the University of
    Maryland, College Park are ineligible.
 
  Deadline.
 
    Applicants must submit three (3) copies of the essay to the
    address listed below, to be RECEIVED no later than
    November 3, 1998.  Late submissions will be returned unopened.
 
  Length and format.
 
    Essays must be submitted in English, typed or word-processed in no
    smaller than 10-point font, single-sided, double-spaced, and on white
    paper, with at least 1-inch margins on all sides.  Applicants should
    use single-spaced endnotes rather than footnotes, and follow style
    guidelines of either the Modern Language Association (MLA) or the
    American Psychological Association (APA).  Essays must be no longer
    than twenty pages, excluding bibliography, including at most two
    pages of endnotes.  Essays not conforming to these instructions
    will not be considered.
 
    The applicant's name must not be included on the essay. Instead,
    include a cover sheet listing the title of the essay, applicant's
    name, address, telephone number, e-mail address (if available), school
    and program attending, year in the program, and the topic area or
    areas of the essay (taken from the list above).
 
Judging.
 
    All essays will be judged anonymously by the Faculty
    in Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
 
Award.
    The Essay Prize of $1000 will be awarded in January, 1999, and
    the winning essay included in the 1999 Maryland Working Papers in
    Linguistics.
 
    The Department reserves the right not to award the prize in a given
    year and may change the terms of the award for future competitions.
 
 
Submissions should be sent to:
 
  Undergraduate Essay Prize
  Department of Linguistics
  1401 Marie Mount Hall
  University of Maryland
  College Park, MD 20742-7505 USA
 
The Essay Prize Web page is:
 
  http://benjamin.umd.edu/prize98/
 
The University of Maryland Department of Linguistics page is:
 
  http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/Depts/Linguistics/
 
The Undergraduate Essay Prize Coordinator is:
 
  Philip Resnik
  resnik at benjamin.umd.edu
  (301) 405-8903
 
----------------------------------------------------------------


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep 18 11:57:38 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 07:57:38 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.18.SEP.1998.075738.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          To Benji Wald
 
               Your message of 9/4/98 arrived when it was inconvenient
          for me to answer, at least thoughtfully.
               My puzzle with respect to languages is only somewhat
          helped by the langue/parole contrast.  It is easy for a
          systematic zoologist to say that the relationship between an
          organism and his, her, or his and her species is that of
          part to whole.  A species is a sexually-reproducing
          community.  There are also language communities of which
          organisms, the speakers of the language, are parts.  Then
          one asks what langue and parole are and it would seem that
          parole is an activity and langue how that activity gets
          carried out.  This, however, does not give us what seem to
          be the analogues of organism and species, i.e., idiolect and
          language.  They seem to both be langue, but parole holds
          them together much as sex holds species together.  On the
          other hand idiolects and languages are behavioral and
          functional entities.  So we can describe them, just as we
          can describe organisms and species, in terms of their
          properties, which change during both ontogeny and phylogeny,
          but the properties of these entities are not the entities
          themselves.  It looks to me as if an idiolect is an
          organism's disposition to behave in a certain way, and a
          language a system of such dispositions that are mutually
          coadapted.  But I am still trying to think this through.  I
          do appreciate what you said about your interest not being
          the metaphysics but the empirical evidence that is relevant
          to solving the problem.  For me the exercise is very much an
          empirical matter.
 
          Michael Ghiselin


From urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com  Fri Sep 18 15:38:03 1998
From: urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com (Urban Lindqvist)
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 11:38:03 EDT
Subject: References
Message-ID: <FRI.18.SEP.1998.113803.EDT.URBAN.LINDQVIST@UPPSALA.MAIL.TELIA.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear list members,
 
I am looking for literature of a certain kind and I hope you are able to
supply me with some references.
First, I would like to find some sociolinguistic studies, preferably but not
necessarily in apparent time, focusing on phonologic/phonetic
variables/variants in word-final position. In connexion with this I am also
interested in literature dealing with word boundaries as parts of the
conditioning environment of sound changes as well as generalization of
sandhi
variants. Finally, I would be happy if somebody could direct me to
some studies of the more intimate details of compensatory lengthening, again
preferably in apparent time, where the different variants and their
behaviour
may be observed.
 
Regards,
 
Urban Lindqvist
urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com


From russo at inrete.it  Sat Sep 19 15:17:09 1998
From: russo at inrete.it (Sonia Cristofaro)
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 11:17:09 EDT
Subject: New website of Archivio Glottologico Italiano
Message-ID: <SAT.19.SEP.1998.111709.EDT.RUSSO@INRETE.IT>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This is to inform that the website of the journal 'Archivio Glottologico
Italiano' is now located at the address
 
http://linguist.unipv.it/ArchivioGlottologicoItaliano.html


From lordearl at bigfoot.com  Tue Sep 22 11:37:30 1998
From: lordearl at bigfoot.com (Thomas Kent)
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 07:37:30 EDT
Subject: Historical Linguistics Books
Message-ID: <TUE.22.SEP.1998.073730.EDT.LORDEARL@BIGFOOT.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Members of the Group,
My name is Thomas Kent, I am a sixteen year old student who is very
interested in Historical Linguistics.
I was wondering whether anyone would be able to recommend a good
introductory text on the topic for me.
Also, in aim of teaching myself a little about historical linguistics, I
would like to study the history of a particular language.  Which language
would be best for this?
Yours sincerely,
Thoomas Kent.
 
===================================
                       Thomas V.T. Kent
hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rex que futurus.
lordearl at bigfoot.com         http://lords.notrix.de
===================================


From dyen at hawaii.edu  Thu Sep 24 21:48:22 1998
From: dyen at hawaii.edu (Isidore Dyen)
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 17:48:22 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <v02140b01b1ffe645d1ac@[128.97.208.84]>
Message-ID: <THU.24.SEP.1998.174822.EDT.DYEN@HAWAII.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
With respect to using the term evolution for linguistic change I am
inclined to think it is appropriate, but of course its association with
the onward-upward character that goes with the term in biology must then
be avoided. As I see it, one of the main factors in linguistic change and
perhaps the main factor is the drive for efficiency in communication which
is dialectically resisted by the need for clarity so that efficiency does
not actually increase andthe actual level of clarity does not change.
Since however change is constant, I believe the term evolution is
appropriate.
 
I believe your characterization of mutual intelligibility as being an
arbitrary criterion is a misconception. After all it concerns
intercommunication, the primary function of language. The difficulty with
mutual intelligibility lies rather in applying it and improvements in that
area could be achieved if the importance of distinguishing languages from
each other could reach the level of attracting financial support. Failing
that we will have to get along with making judgments as we have until now.
 
As for entropy it could not be expected to be found in the structure of a
language since the energy input to maintain clarity prevents observable
change in the direction of disorganization. However within a language
regarded as a closed system, there is (for all practical purposes)
observable changes in the direction of disorganization in
dialectalization as diversification tending toward the shattering of a
language. The opposing force is the rate of interlocution; as that rate
is high it militates against diversification and if it is high
enough, promotes homogeneity and when it is low or decreases is
accompanied by increased dialectalization and if it reaches zero, may
be followed by language fission.
 
 On Wed, 19 Aug 1998,
bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> With regard to the cladistic discussion I hope it is worth me noting a
> point where linguists most generally agree that biological and linguistic
> evolution seem to be quite different, even to the extent that some
> linguists discourage use of the term "evolution" for linguistic changes
> which are matters of consensus in linguistic studies, such as the changes
> from Old t o current English, or from Latin to the current Romance
> languages, among many other cases.  (Excluded from consideration is the
> evolution of language from "pre-language", an issue which is not at all a
> matter of agreement among linguists, and which has only recently reentered
> serious linguistic discussion after a long period of banishment).
>
> It is in the matter of selectional pressures disfavoring certain lines of
> evolution and favoring others at certain times.  It is a generally held
> principle of linguists that all languages as systems are equal to all other
> languages as communicative systems, and that, with the exception of
> auxiliary languages (not a speaker's first language, maybe nobody's first
> language, e.g., in the case of pidgins), change does not make a language
> more suitable for survival as a communicative device.  Linguists also do
> not have a notion of complexity that would presume that any language, as a
> total system, is more "complex" than any other language.  The same can
> certainly not be said of biological entities (a separate point from the
> "survival" one).
>
> It seems that biological diversification is not motivated by survival;
> selection for survival operates on the diversification.  The motivating
> factor seems to be changes in the entire bio-system, ultimately tied to
> physical (including chemical) changes in environment.   No telling how far
> into the universe that ultimately leads.  The closest analog for selection
> pressures in language seems to be social, and may involve the total
> replacement of one language by another, so that one language fails to
> survive, never because it could not adopt to the communicative demands put
> on it, but because it could not find a social niche to allow its
> continuation.  Thus, many languages have disappeared without current trace
> (except for borrowings from them into surviving languages), and this
> continues to happen to surviving languages for socio-economic reasons.  In
> general then, I think linguists could accept an analogy between instability
> and change in languages and life forms on the basis of not well understood
> interruptions in the continuity of systems as they are reproduced (in
> language through childhood and even later learning, in biology through
> changes in genetic coding), but do not find selectional pressures analogous
> in language and life forms.
>
> in particular, the following would not be found analogous by linguists.
> Ghiselin writes:
> >               Mutation is universal among genetic systems, and we
> >          know that it is necessary because were it not the second law
> >          of thermodynamics would be false.
>
> If I understand the law referred to have to do with the "entropy" of
> systems, languages do not show recognisable signs of loss of systematic
> orderliness as they change.  That follows from the consensus principle that
> languages are equally systematic at all stages of their evolution.  At the
> same time, many, perhaps most, linguists believe that there are favored
> systems, so that one change in a system can favor a subsequent one.
> Genetic research probably suggests some analogies, but it is my impression
> that factors outside the system shared by a set of organisms are more
> frequently called upon in explaining the directions of biological change
> than in explaining the directions of linguistic change.  Nevertheless, both
> linguists and biologists are concerned with internal constraints on
> possible directions of change, according to the principles by which the
> systems are organised.
>
> He continues:
> >          the universality of change may be a law of nature, and not just
> >          a matter of contingent, historical fact.
>
> Historical facts at the proper level of abstraction and "laws of nature"
> can be controversial as mutually exclusive philosophical alternatives.  It
> is not clear that social change is either more or less arbitrary than
> linguistic change.  Social change does seem to involve differences in the
> complexity of particular social systems, e.g., production of surplus and
> the rise of cities, technological change, etc.  But, as I said, the
> linguistic systems that linguists usually investigate, i.e., grammatical
> systems, do not seem to vary in complexity.  Subsystems of grammatical
> systems can indeed vary in complexity, but there seems to be a
> cross-linguistic balance of complexity when it comes to considering the
> interaction of sub-systems in the overall grammatical system of a language.
> Linguists do not agree on a basis to think otherwise.
>
> >               Switching to philosophy, one interesting point about
> >          how you conceptualize the problem is that you conceive of
> >          languages as systems in this sense.  They are concrete,
> >          particular things, with interactions among their parts, that
> >          evolve as such.  One way to characterize such a position is
> >          to say that it takes the individuality of languages very
> >          seriously.
>
> In the same way that biologists find the concept of individual species
> useful, though the criteria for membership in a set differ from language to
> biological species.  I think some respondents already discussed the
> commonality in terms of continuity (despite change) in successive members
> of a set.
>
> It is very easy for somebody who treats a whole
> >          as if it were its parts viewed atomistically to overlook
> >          such deeper connections.  That is part of the problem with
> >          those who want to think of languages as defined by mutual
> >          intelligibility.
>
> Mutual intelligibility is an arbitrary criterion for membership in a
> particular language set from a historical linguistic point of view, as you
> have been informed.  Continuity is the criterion used.  There is the level
> of species in biology at which a criterial discontinuity can be posited on
> the basis of ability to reproduce (cross-fertilise).  That seems to be a
> cleaner cut-off point than where mutual intelligibility decays.  Still,
> even on this list, we had recent discussion of the possibility that mutual
> intelligibility allows change to spread from one variety of a language to
> another, but that lack of mutual intelligibility blocks it.  That seems
> quite logical, and could be construed as analogous to cross-fertilisation.
> Its only weak point is that changes can spread across mutually
> unintelligible languages through the agency of intervening bilingualism,
> probably most often communal rather than isolated individuals.  That ends
> the analogy between mutual intelligibility and cross-fertilisation with
> respect to continuity in evolution.
>


From goertzen at rrnet.com  Mon Sep 28 15:45:41 1998
From: goertzen at rrnet.com (Stanley Goertzen)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 11:45:41 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <MON.28.SEP.1998.114541.EDT.GOERTZEN@RRNET.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Michael Ghiselin (Friday, September 18, 1998 6:57 AM) wrote:
[...]
>It looks to me as if an idiolect is an 
>organism's disposition to behave in a certain way, 
>and a language a system of such dispositions that are 
>mutually coadapted.
[...]
 
Having just read (and still struggling to understand) Noam Chomsky's 
objection to attempts to define language in this way (as E-language 
rather than I-language), responses to his arguments would be helpful 
to me.  Chomsky wrote:  
 
"It is common among philosophers, particularly those influenced 
by Wittgenstein, to hold that 'knowledge of language is an ability', 
which can be exercised by speaking, understanding, reading, 
talking to oneself: 'to know a language just is to have the ability to 
do these and similar things.'  Some go further and hold that an 
ability is expressible in dispositional terms, so that language 
becomes, as Quine described it, 'a complex of present dispositions 
to verbal behavior.'  If we accept this further view, then two people 
who are disposed to say different things under given circumstances 
speak different languages, even if they are identical twins with exactly  
the same history, who speak the same language by any sensible criteria 
we might establish.  There are so many well-known problems with this 
conception that I will simply drop it, and consider the vaguer proposal 
that knowledge of language is a practical ability to speak and understand 
(Michael Dummet, Anthony Kenny, and others, in one or another form)."  
.... 
"A rather striking feature of the widespread conception of language 
as a system of abilities, or a habit system of some kind, or a complex 
of dispositions, is that it has been completely unproductive."  
-Noam Chomsky, "Language and Problems of Knowledge," in 
Martinich, ed., _The Philosophy of Language_ (2nd Ed., 1990). 
 
Sincerely
Stanley Goertzen


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Sep 30 15:22:08 1998
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 11:22:08 EDT
Subject: Q: oblique cognates
Message-ID: <WED.30.SEP.1998.112208.EDT.LARRYT@COGS.SUSX.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I am looking for a term for a certain non-canonical type of
cognation.
 
One non-canonical variety is as follows.  Latin <dent-> `tooth'
requires a PIE *<dent->.  English `tooth' and Greek <odont-> require
a PIE *<dont->.  Gothic <tunth> requires a PIE *<dnt->.  The several
forms are therefore not strictly descended from a single ancestral
form, but rather from variant forms of a single root.  Such forms as
the Latin, English and Gothic ones have been called `oblique
cognates' in the literature.  Fine.
 
But there's another case.  English `head' is directly cognate with
Latin <caput> `head'.  However, Spanish <cabeza> does not descend
directly from <caput>, but rather from a suffixed derivative of this.
Therefore the English and Spanish words are not directly cognate,
even though they are indirectly cognate in an important way.  Is
there a label for this kind of cognation?  What would you prefer to
call the relationship between the English and Spanish words?
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
England
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk


From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Tue Sep  1 21:00:09 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 17:00:09 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <9807319046.AA904602373@casmail.calacademy.org>
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.170009.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
Dear Professor Ghiselin,
        I was thinking when I wrote that note how badly seals perform on
land compared to their speed and agility in the water. But I was also
thinking that a puffin was a good analogy for a trilingual: puffins are
excellent underwater swimmers. Unlike gannets, who dive from a height into
the water, puffins dive from the surface and pursue their prey. They nest
on land, and dig burrows to protect their young; as Jacques Cartier noted
on his first voyage to Canada, if you put your hand in the burrow "they
bite like dogs". A puffin can also trek across the ground much faster than
a penguin!
 
        Not all bilinguals are equally at home in both languages. In fact
the vast majority of Canadian bilinguals these days speak either French or
English as a mother tongue and the alternative as a second language. I
have often heard conversations on the street where one participant is
speaking French and the other English, each comprehending the other
perfectly. This is even more common in writing, especially between
university colleagues: I write in English to all my francophone friends
and they write back in French to me. There's also a lot of linguistic
literature on so-called code-switching, where bilinguals often switch back
and forth in mid sentence, since for most bilinguals some topics are more
easily dealt with in one language or the other. Anglophones in Quebec, for
example have their own different dialect for talking politics or
education, using either French terms or unrecognizable English calques of
French terms or phrases.
 
On learning a second language a bilingual has acquired the ability to
function in a second community where otherwise he would be "like a fish
out of water". I think the amphibian is a better analogy for the bilingual
that the hermaphrodite. I can speak French, but I only use that skill when
I am in a francophone community; I can also swim (a skill which I also
learned originally at school), but I only use that skill when I get into
the water. It seems that acquiring the ability to adapt to a different
milieu or medium is common to both. 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


From maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Tue Sep  1 13:23:20 1998
From: maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Max W Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:23:20 EDT
Subject: Multiple syncope
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.092320.EDT.MAXW@COGS.SUSX.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
Do colleagues share my hunch that a syncope/apocope process (loss of
syllabic nucleus) cannot affect, at the same time, more than one
syllable in a foot? That is, for example,
 
        *'CVCVCV > 'CVC(C)
 
 
(It may be that `foot' is not always the correct domain for this
`constraint'.)
 
Of course, over time, successive syncope processes may remove several
nuclei (e.g. Latin uetulum > French /vjej/ `old').
 
Or, if you don't share my hunch, have you got examples where more than
one nucleus is lost from a foot as part of the same process?
 
I would also be glad to hear of references to relevant theoretical
discussions, or data.
 
Max Wheeler
 
___________________________________________________________________________
 
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________


From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu  Tue Sep  1 13:18:45 1998
From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:18:45 EDT
Subject: Re[4/6]: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <l03102845b2019775474a@[131.174.186.146]>
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.091845.EDT.DELANCEY@DARKWING.UOREGON.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Michael Cysouw wrote:
 
> A central point in this comparison is what is concieved as an 'individual'
> (or 'unit' if you don't like to anthropomorphize). In linguistics there are
> two basic views on language around: either the *speaker* is seen as a
> unit/individual, or a *language* is seen as a unit/individual. Depending on
> which stance you take, you'll get differing analogies to biological
> concepts.
 
Language as individual makes little sense to me, but I think that speaker=
individual is clearly the most useful analogy.  Michael's observation that
utterances rather than languages or individual speakers are the units of
selection is correct, but of course this makes them parallel not to
individuals in biological evolution, but to genes.  They are indeed the
units upon which selection operates, in quite the same sense as genes,
rather than individuals, are in biology.  And this parallel works quite
well--not with utterances, but with constructions (i.e. morphemes,
words, and syntactic constructions), which are the building
blocks which make up the structure of a language system, just as
genes are the building blocks of a genotype.  Utterances,
which are actual entities whose structure is informed by the
underlying knowledge of constructions, are, on this model, not
genes but the expression of genes.
     We then have useful parallels to the notion of genotype vs.
phenotype--which ends up recalling, in I think a more useful form,
the "competence/performance" dichotomy between the representation
of a language in a speaker's mind and the actual linguistic forms
produced.
     As in biology, it is more useful for many purposes to think of
a population rather than a species.  That is, there is no abstract
"language" shared by all speakers; rather, there is a population of
interacting individuals whose underlying systems share a great deal
of structure--some but not all of which is probably essential for
interaction with other members of the population, and therefor in
a sense criterial for membership in the "species".
    There are drastic failures in the linguistic/biological parallel, such
as the fact that a single individual can be a native speaker of more than
one language.  But the overall parallels work neatly:  in gross
measure, replication is similar; the speaker acquires linguistic
structure from members of the previous generation.  (Can be more
or, theoretically, less than two such members, though).
     To me this seems like a framework within which we can think
about answers to Michael Ghiselin's question of Aug. 31:
 
>                One point that I still would like clarified is the
>           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
>           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>           language.
 
A basic ontological problem with all the human sciences is the nature
of constructs like "language", "culture", etc.  The individual nervous
systems in which these are represented are part of the physical world,
and in some sense, which someday we may understand, the representations
of language (for example) in these nervous systems is also an aspect of
the physical world.  But the abstract "language" which is "shared" by
all members of a speech community is not something which can be located
in the physical world--so, where and what IS it?  I think, in fact, it
is very much the same kind of thing as a species, which likewise does
not exist--what do exist are individuals and populations.
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Tue Sep  1 13:18:09 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 09:18:09 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.1.SEP.1998.091809.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Prof. Hewson,
               An amphibian is generally a sort of compromise between
          two kinds of functional demands that allow it to switch back
          and forth between one and another habitat.  Penguins swim
          well but they waddle on land and otherwise do not do very
          well there.  Bilingual persons supposedly are adept at both
          tongues.
               Another possibility that comes to mind is
          hermaphroditic organisms.  They can function as either sex
          or both depending on the circumstance.  A lot of them are
          "sequential" hermaphrodites, switching from one role to
          another.  But there are simultaneous hermaphrodites in a
          fully functional sense: donating and receiving male gametes
          at the same time.  I suppose that bilingual persons mainly
          switch from one language to another but perhaps not
          entirely.  I am not sure whether such speculation is apt to
          lead anywhere.  But thanks.
          MG


From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Wed Sep  2 12:04:03 1998
From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 08:04:03 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <WED.2.SEP.1998.080403.EDT.BWALD@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
MG raises a difficult issue:
>               One point that I still would like clarified is the
>          relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>          language itself.
 
I think the frankest answer might be that linguists would like that to be
clarified as well.  They are almost invariably interested in
generalisations from individual speakers to groups of speakers of the
"same" language (or "same" dialect, etc.), or even to all speakers of all
languages (speakers = language "knowers", whatever you want to call them).
>From this perspective the least that I can say is that linguistics is
ultimately about approaching resolution of such issues -- and there is no
danger that you will get a definitive answer in the near future.  We're
still working on it in our various ways.  One strategy is to eliminate
certain a priori hypotheses, such as that the knowledge of any single
speaker can be identified with total knowledge of "the language", or even
that the total knowledge of all speakers exhaust the "possibilities" of the
language (or of "language").  I have to leave it at that for now.
 
MG continues:
 
The speaker is a part of a language
>          community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>          language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand,
>          speak, participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do
>          not call them parts of the language.
 
Right.  Because the speaker is part of the "language community", not of the
"language".  The "language community" is another difficult concept, for
reasons similar to why "the language" or "language" is/are.  What's
"English", for example?  And then, what's "language"?  We know some
properties, and are constantly in the process of discovering or debating
others, but we are not fololhardy enough to seriously attempt a definition
of the basic concept that motivates our field.  Isn't it the same for
"life" among biologists and such?  (bio = "life").  Aren't biologists
similar to linguists in trying to approach the problem of "life" by
studying the properties of "life" forms, without hoping to exhaust the
subject or seriously define its fundamental concept?
 
(Wouldn't we be unduly and even presumptuously limiting ourselves if we
offered definitions of our most fundamental concepts rather than leaving
them as problematic and subject to tacit, if somewhat inarticulate -- even
if vulnerable, agreement?)
 
Finally, MG brings in the concept of "culture" (a term that has both
"linguistic" and "biological" uses):
 
There are a whole
>          range of related problems with respect to culture in
>          general.  The way Tylor defined "culture" it includes
>          concrete artifacts.
 
I agree that the concepts "culture" and "language community" are related,
and share some similar problems.  In any case, for most "prehistoric
cultures" all we have are concrete artifacts.  If we would prefer to focus
on "culture" as something "soft", e.g., any given society's "solution" to
the problem of how to live, we still get a lot of ideas about that from how
members of that culture behave, and among those behaviors are the artifacts
they produce and/or use (or at least have some understanding of the use
of).  Again, a "language community" is interesting in how it reflects the
use of language, through a salient degree of uniformity or orderly
differentiation, to circumscribe a culture.  Apart from various lexical
semantic domains (e.g., kinship systems, lexical systems of beliefs, social
activities, social relations, artifacts...), it remains problematic what
inferences we can make about a culture simply from the its degree of
orderly differentiation or uniformity of language use.  (Indeed, we cannot
recognise the "orderliness" of linguistic variability within a culture
until we know what social features of the culture it correlates with.
However, given a number of empirical studies, we may have some expectations
about what social correlates to look for, when we observe a number of
individual speakers who we have some reason to assume are products of the
"same" culture.)  I guess about the degree of uniformity and/or variability
in a culture and a language, we have to tease out inferences about its age
and its complexity (which may interact).  Thus, when we compare the
variability in "American" and "British" English, we are tempted to ascribe
the "greater" variability of the latter to its age.  But if we remember to
include such varieites as African American English in "American English"
(as a product of its development within an American social context --
something that excludes inclusion of Caribbean English in "British
English"), then we greatly increase our view of variability of "American
English", but must account for it in terms of "complexity" of American
"culture", rather than "age" relative to British culture.


From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Wed Sep  2 20:15:18 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1998 16:15:18 EDT
Subject: Re[4/6]: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.96.980831161915.5144B-100000@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Message-ID: <WED.2.SEP.1998.161518.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Tue, 1 Sep 1998, Scott DeLancey wrote:
 
>  Michael Ghiselin's question of Aug. 31:
>
> >                One point that I still would like clarified is the
> >           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
> >           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
> >           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
> >           language.
>
> A basic ontological problem with all the human sciences is the nature
> of constructs like "language", "culture", etc.  The individual nervous
> systems in which these are represented are part of the physical world,
> and in some sense, which someday we may understand, the representations
> of language (for example) in these nervous systems is also an aspect of
> the physical world.  But the abstract "language" which is "shared" by
> all members of a speech community is not something which can be located
> in the physical world--so, where and what IS it?  I think, in fact, it
> is very much the same kind of thing as a species, which likewise does
> not exist--what do exist are individuals and populations.
 
It is useful to think of a language (Saussure's langue) as a means of
production, and the discourse that vibrates on the air waves (Saussure's
parole) as the product. Only the former is a permanent possession of the
native speaker, and it has a location in the physical world as the brain
surgeons well know. In fact it can be damaged by physical intervention, by
brain trauma. The means of production is finite (a language) whereas the
product is unlimited (language, not a language).
 
Is the speech community an abstraction or something concrete? To start to
answer that question it is useful to first decide if there is any
difference between a brick wall and a pile of bricks with a bag of cement.
The wall differs in that it is an alignment that can form a barrier or a
support, a physical presence that a random pile of bricks lacks.
 
A community language is also an alignment of sorts: individuals adapt
their "means of production" to community norms. This type of alignment can
also be a barrier to outsiders (remember the shibboleth), and a support
for community projects that otherwise might be difficult if not impossible
to achieve. And a speech community can also be destroyed by physical
intervention: you simply kill off the appropriate individuals just as the
brain surgeon tries to excise the cells with lesions in brain surgery, and
not touch the healthy cells.
 
The Bloomfieldians, because they were so influenced by positivism, left us
with the naive idea that what was not concrete was abstract. I think the
image of the brick wall shows that reality is much more subtle. There are
all kinds of structures and substructures that are not "concrete" but
every bit as much a part of the real world (I was tempted to write "real")
as the keyboard that my fingers are pounding. I prefer to keep the term
_abstract_ for mental constructs that are purely imaginary, like unreal
numbers in mathematics.
 
I sometimes think however that the Bloomfieldians did us a favour by
making such a mess of things that we really have to start again at the
beginning...
 
 
 
 
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


From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw  Thu Sep  3 11:39:25 1998
From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 07:39:25 EDT
Subject: where is language located? (wrt: cladistic linguistics discussion)
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.073925.EDT.FCOSW5@MBM1.SCU.EDU.TW>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
A few days ago, Dr. Ghiselin raised the following question:
 
> One point that I still would like clarified is the relationship between
> the speaker of the language and the language itself.  The speaker is
> part of a language community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts
> of the language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand, speak,
> participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do not call them
> parts of the language.  There are a whole range of related problems
> with respect to culture in general.
 
This (very valid) question brings up, to my mind, a paradox that i
routinely inflict on my sophomores in my introductory-survey course in
general linguistics: In one sense, a given language can be regarded as
residing in, and a property of, an individual human brain.  After all,
it's within our own brains that we store (in some form or other) the
vocabulary items and grammatical patterns that we use when we speak,
write, or interpret what someone else has said or written.  But in
another sense, a given language resides in and is the property of a
social community, since the language exists by virtue of and is defined
by the consensus of the community that uses it.
 
To be specific: I am a native/fluent speaker of English.  This means,
among other things, that i have inside my brain (somehow) adequate
knowledge of a few tens of thousands of English words and of a fairly
complete range of English grammatical patterns, ready to be used at the
drop of a hat; i rarely need to refer to anything outside my own brain
to use the English language, and in that sense the English language is
fully alive and contained inside my brain.
 
On the other hand, the English language that lives inside my brain is
almost fully defined by the consensus of the English-speaking community
to which i belong.  Yes, i've got a few idiosyncracies (mostly involving
a handful of lexical and orthographic preferences), but i'm justified in
calling myself an English-speaker -- in identifying the language i'm
using right now as `English' -- by the potential ability of appealing to
a large community that agrees to assign that label to this particular
set of vocabulary items and grammatical patterns.
 
In other words (as i point out to my students), we can look at the
phenomenon of human language from (at least) two different perspectives:
as a psychological phenomenon, whereby a language can be said to reside
in and be the property of each individual human brain; and as a
sociological phenomenon, whereby a language can be said to be defined by
the consensus of a community.  And both perspectives are valuable,
though they can occasionally be incompatible.  I'm a big believer in the
scientific value of paradox and dialectics.
 
Which brings us back to the original issue raised by Dr. Ghiselin: Is it
preferable to regard languages as historically organized in terms of
(cladistic) glossogenetic descent, in which each language is identified
as being derived from some single (in principle) identifiable earlier
language (which in turn is of course similarly derivable), or in some
other fashion?  My short answer would be: Yes, within reason.  Meaning,
Yes, most languages (leaving aside for the moment pidgins, creoles, and
other examples of `Mischsprachen' mentioned by Larry Trask in his
excellent posting of a month ago) can fruitfully be viewed in terms of a
cladistic or quasi-cladistic lineage leading back from any given
language to a single ancestor at at particular point in time.  But
*certain* alternative perspectives are also valuable, most notably not
only the kinds of perspectives that have been developed in pidgin &
creole studies but the concepts developed by Weinreich, Masica, etc. in
linguistic convergence and areal studies.
 
Responsible linguistic research needs to make use of all of these
perspectives more or less in tandem, just as it needs to recognize that
any given language is simultaneously a psychological and a sociological
phenomenon.  I suspect a good biological analogy might be the dichotomy
(and fruitful interaction) of evolutionary and ecological perspectives
on living creatures.
 
Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
 
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
 
(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw
 
http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html
 
 
 
        ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!***
 
        ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!***


From a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de  Thu Sep  3 11:39:47 1998
From: a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de (agnes korn)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 07:39:47 EDT
Subject: titus
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.073947.EDT.A.KORN@EM.UNIFRANKFURT.DE>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
TITUS, the Frankfurt-based server of material related to Indo-European
studies, has been refashioned and updated (new adresses, courses,
studies programs, research projects...):
http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de


From a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de  Thu Sep  3 19:31:16 1998
From: a.korn at em.uni-frankfurt.de (agnes korn)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 15:31:16 EDT
Subject: titus
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.153116.EDT.A.KORN@EM.UNIFRANKFURT.DE>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Paul Hopper,
TITUS-members are those who contribute e.g. texts or lexical material to
the TITUS-database. Anyone wishing to offer material for joint use is
invited to contact Jost Gippert:
gippert at em.uni-frankfurt.de
Yours
Agnes Korn
 
 
Paul J Hopper wrote:
 
> Thanks, Agnes Korn, for the information about Titus, the Indo-European
> data base. HISTLING-ers should be aware that some of the data can only
> be downloaded by TITUS members.
> Question: How does one become a TITUS member?
>
> Paul Hopper


From ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu  Thu Sep  3 19:29:48 1998
From: ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul J Hopper)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 15:29:48 EDT
Subject: titus
In-Reply-To: <35EE630B.7F9F2F6C@em.uni-frankfurt.de>
Message-ID: <THU.3.SEP.1998.152948.EDT.PH1U@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Thanks, Agnes Korn, for the information about Titus, the Indo-European
data base. HISTLING-ers should be aware that some of the data can only
be downloaded by TITUS members.
Question: How does one become a TITUS member?
 
Paul Hopper


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:05:25 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:05:25 EDT
Subject: where is language located? (wrt: cladistic linguistics discu
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080525.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Steven,
               Thank you for addressing my metaphysical question,
          which you recast in somewhat different terms, by asking
          where a language resides.
               The answer that you gave can be compared to asking
          where genes reside.  We say that each and every organism has
          genes in its chromosomes.  The chromosomes and the genes are
          parts of the individual organisms.  Each diploid organism
          has two sets of these genes, each set being a genome in the
          strict sense.  Each organism is a part of a species.  Each
          gene is a part of a gene-pool.  The gene pool, like the
          species, is a supra-organismal, or populational whole.
          Analogizing with language, each organism has a version of a
          language, which is its idiolect, but the language proper is
          a higher-level entity.
               I see nothing in principle incompatible or paradoxical
          about this complexity, but the situation is such that it is
          apt to be confusing.  To be metaphysically precise I would
          say that the possession of a language is the property of an
          organism and a society, rather than that it is a property
          of either.  It does not seem to me that a language, or a
          gene, is a property.  But what is it?
               Be this as it may, I also see nothing incompatible
          about the diachronic and the synchronic perspective upon an
          evolving supra-organismal whole, any more than I see
          anything incompatible about a diachronic and a synchronic
          perspective upon a person.  Perspectives can be misleading,
          but they are not false in the sense that a fallacious
          argument or a false premise is.  The problem arises when we
          take our perspective and use it as a basis for an erroneous
          conception of things.  If a language is treated as if it
          were a class rather than a whole, then the very ability for
          it to change becomes problematic in the extreme.  Languages
          as classes certainly are incompatible with languages as
          individuals (wholes) and I think that your comments help to
          clarify that.  Thank you very much.
          Best,
          Mike


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:05:46 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:05:46 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080546.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear bwald
               (I'm sorry I don't know your name, only your address!)
               Before reading your message I sent a long one to Steven
          Schaufele about the relationship in question.  It may have
          helped.  And if linguists are interested in that sort of
          issue I am very pleased to be able to discuss such matters
          with them.
               You are quite right about the biologists' problem with
          "life" and the linguists' problem with "language."  These
          entities in the broadest sense originated once and only once
          in the history of the world.  All organisms and lineages
          thereof with which we are familiar have a common ancestor,
          and the capacity for language is the property of a single
          species.  Life in that sense and language in that sense are
          individuals.  A lot of their properties must be due to
          historical accident, or contingency.  If we were able to
          study similar entities that have evolved on different
          planets, we might be able to come up with a definition of
          some class of life-like entities.  Likewise with
          language-like entities that have no common ancestry.  In
          other words, defining life or language in that sense is
          hindered by our familiarity with a class that has but a
          single instance.
               It is not quite that bad, because when we study
          entities her on earth we find lots of species, and
          species-like things, which allow us to come up with a
          generalization that amounts to a definition of classes of
          such things.  So we can define the class of species, and the
          class of languages, even though Homo sapiens and French have
          no definitions strictly speaking.  And we can define a class
          that includes both the species and the language.  All
          species and all languages are lineages etc.
               I hope this metaphysics is not too tedious, but it
          shows I think the importance of studying such parallels in
          clarifying our thinking about such matters.
          Best,
          Mike Ghiselin


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep  4 12:06:08 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:06:08 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.4.SEP.1998.080608.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          Dear Professor Hewson,
               I am a bit puzzled by the definition of bilinguality
          though it is a bit far from the original topic of lineages
          and such.  As I had understood it, bilingual persons are
          supposed to be equally adept at two languages, not just to
          be fluent in both.  And are not the typical bilinguals
          persons who say, learn one language from one parent, the
          other from another?  I remember some very interesting
          discussion about such matters from Els Oksar when both of us
          were in Berlin a few years ago.
               Switching makes sense for reasons you suggest.
          However, we switch from one jargon to another, and I am
          wondering how much of what you mention is just that.  Mixing
          jargons can be sort of fun, if perhaps sometimes offensive:
          Like the dog or bitch returneth to his or her vomit....
               Forgive me.  It is late in the day and I really must go
          home, but thanks for the interesting comments.
          Sincerely,
          Michael Ghiselin


From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Sat Sep  5 19:08:42 1998
From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald)
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 15:08:42 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <SAT.5.SEP.1998.150842.EDT.BWALD@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
MG writes:
 
>               (I'm sorry I don't know your name, only your address!)
 
        Benji Wald.
 
>               Before reading your message I sent a long one to Steven
>          Schaufele about the relationship in question.  It may have
>          helped.  And if linguists are interested in that sort of
>          issue I am very pleased to be able to discuss such matters
>          with them.
 
I was relieved that Steven and some others gave you Saussure's position on
"langue" and "parole", as it relates to your question about the general
view of linguists on the issue of the relation between speaker and
"language".  I didn't want to go into the detail and various
interpretations.
 
>               You are quite right about the biologists' problem with
>          "life" and the linguists' problem with "language."  These
>          entities in the broadest sense originated once and only once
>          in the history of the world.  All organisms and lineages
>          thereof with which we are familiar have a common ancestor,
>          and the capacity for language is the property of a single
>          species.  Life in that sense and language in that sense are
>          individuals.
 
It remains moot whether all languages have a common ancestor.  However, if
we take the concept of "language" at its most fundamental, as the "innate"
(pre-programmed) ability to acquire any human language that has ever
existed as a first language, I guess there's no harm in making the
assumption that that ability derives from a crucial innovation in the
hominid line of evolution shared by all subsequent "humans" (whether or not
that innovation was limited to language, as innatists assume, or had a more
general nature).  We linguists have argued amongst ourselves whether that
necessarily means that *implementation* of that ability by creating
observable languages happened only once or several times (within a short
period of time, let's say, in different location) -- something like Newton
and Leibniz coming up with the calculus more or less independently (let's
give Leibniz some credit, although not as much as he felt forced to claim,
given that his knowledge of some of Newton's early work probably helped him
develop what Newton concealed -- and even in a form that has been accepted
as more convenient than Newton's).
 
NB. the difference between "ability" and "implementation" of that ability
seems clear, since, if I understand correctly, humans sociopathically
isolated at birth from normal social contact with other humans, have the
ability but don't implement it -- and, due to the relation of innate
language ability to various other maturational processes -- cannot
implement that ability to the extent that people normally socialised do, if
they are exposed to implementation (by others) after a certain (critical)
period of organic development.
 
A lot of their properties must be due to
>          historical accident, or contingency.
 
Because of what I said above, that is contentious.  However, most linguists
are aware of this issue and have to deal with it one way or other in
seeking linguistic universals.  Generally, they have no choice but to go on
the basis of empirical data.  If we can't agree on whether all observable
*particular* languages descend from one original *particular* language,
then we can't agree whether or not a common descent has limited the
considerable variety we do observe from a much greater *possible* variety.
Some linguists might even be inconsistent by supposing (even hoping -- for
whatever reason) that all languages are ultimately descended from some
*particular* original language, but by still insisting that the variety we
observe can safely delimit the possible variation in human language.  It is
not really all that harmful to the field, because the two considerations
never coexist in the same research project.  Anyway, strong hypotheses
about universals on the basis of observable language variation has proven
challenging and vulnerable enough, without having to worry about whether
possible but unobserved/observable languages would disprove them.
 
NB.  Virtually all linguists are excited when a "new" language is
"discovered".  However, that hardly ever happens anymore, as opposed to
dissemination of relevant information about a language which was already
known to some experts but had not yet become a matter of general knowledge
among linguists.  Linguists are much more concerned about the continuing
disappearance/cessation of languages that have not yet been (and never can
be) completely mined for their relevance to linguistic theory.
 
If we were able to
>          study similar entities that have evolved on different
>          planets, we might be able to come up with a definition of
>          some class of life-like entities.  Likewise with
>          language-like entities that have no common ancestry.  In
>          other words, defining life or language in that sense is
>          hindered by our familiarity with a class that has but a
>          single instance.
 
Linguists have (probably) always dreamed about this.  Few linguists are
naive enough to seriously expect that "human" language (or the capacity for
it) has evolved anywhere else in the universe -- but that does not hold for
the vaguer notion of "beings with superior intelligence", something that is
hard (actually *impossible*) for us to imagine without it having relevance
to human language.
 
NB.  Since we're dealing with science fiction, let's not worry about what
"superior intelligence" is supposed to mean, or how we could recognise it,
or whether it means "superior TO us" or "superior LIKE us", etc.
 
>               It is not quite that bad, because when we study
>          entities her on earth we find lots of species, and
>          species-like things, which allow us to come up with a
>          generalization that amounts to a definition of classes of
>          such things.
 
        Yeah, like I was saying above.
 
So we can define the class of species, and the
>          class of languages, even though Homo sapiens and French have
>          no definitions strictly speaking.  And we can define a class
>          that includes both the species and the language.  All
>          species and all languages are lineages etc.
 
Generally speaking, that's true for our assumptions about languages.  One
thing I'm not sure about is whether human beings raised in a social context
but without language, say, a set of congenitally deaf children, would
develop spontaneously a (sign) language -- in which case, the language
would have no lineage.  Innatists like Chomsky have suggested such a thing,
and I think some empirical studies of some deaf communities have proposed
such a development -- but I'm not well enough versed in such studies to
know whether or how intervention in such communities of speakers of
languages with lineages queers conclusions about spontaneous implementation
of language abilities under such circumstances.
 
NB.  It's not quite clear to me what the parallelism between prosody in
spoken language and facial gestures in sign language (vs. phonological
structure of words in spoken languages parallel to hand gestures in sign
languages) suggests about such issues.   (What does the difference between
word order in adjacent spoken languages and sign order in sign language
suggest?  I don't know what the conventional wisdom of sign language
experts is for this issue -- or if there is one.)
 
>               I hope this metaphysics is not too tedious, but it
>          shows I think the importance of studying such parallels in
>          clarifying our thinking about such matters.
 
I'm not really reacting to the issues on a metaphysical level, but in terms
of the empirical basis for such speculations.   --  Benji


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Mon Sep  7 18:51:43 1998
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 14:51:43 EDT
Subject: hello, IE websites
Message-ID: <MON.7.SEP.1998.145143.EDT.CJUSTUS@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Dorothy,
 
>From the exchange on Titus, it occurred to me that you, if not historical
linguists generally, might want to know about our IE website, if you don't
already:
 
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/lrc
 
We are still getting our bearings, stymied in our original goals of making
hard to find articles available on request by copyright restrictions. We
are also working out issue of font display and database organization, among
other things. Right now we are slowly getting Lehmann's out-of-print READER
up under our 'Online Texts' rubric, under the IE Documentation Center.
 
We want to make this a useful resource. Any and all comments welcome,
 
Carol


From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp  Tue Sep  8 13:22:20 1998
From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 09:22:20 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.8.SEP.1998.092220.EDT.>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this list.
Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as many
of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many of
the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and ill-defined
as the foundational concepts in linguistics. It is also nice to have
someone outside the field, particularly a biologist, raising the
important issue of the ontology of language.
 
    As I see  it, linguistics since its inception in the nineteenth
century, has been defined not so much by a set of problems or a class of
phenomena to be explained, or even by a methodological approach, but
rather by the strange motto "Linguistics must be made a (natural)
science!" That is, to begin with, there was a desire to break with the
tradition of studying language within the medieval curriculum of
grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Two of the most influential research
programs in linguistics, the Neo-grammarian in the late nineteenth
century and Generative Grammar in the mid-twentieth embraced this motto
by asserting strong connections between linguistics and biology. The
neo-grammarian family tree model asserts, in effect if not explicitly,
that language is an organism independent of its speakers.  The
generative model asserts that language is a part of an organism, an
organ, like the hand or the liver.
 
    Beside the fact that these two models are logically incompatible (if
the first model is acurrate, then language change must be due to
mutation and speciation motivated by selectional pressures, if the
second correct then the locus for this change must be the human organism
itself-- hence language must be due to mutation and speciation within
the human race, which is empirically false), attempts to impose
biological models on language study have had the paradoxical effect of
making linguistics less empirical, hence less 'scientific'-- by a priori
limiting the types of data deemed worthy of consideration as well as the
types of hypotheses which might be proposed.
 
    Thus the traditional position  in historical linguistics is that
'genetic' relationships between languages are somehow real and
important, while relationships due to contact is mere noise. It has
taken a long time for linguists to accept the idea that contact
relationships are also subject to regularities which can be rigorously
modeled.  But really there are no genetic relationships. All
similarities between languages are based on contact (since an infant's
first language is the language of those who raise it, not necessarily
its biological parents), and so-called 'genetic' relationships simply
represent one extreme on a continuum of contact.
 
    The faults of generativists in this regard are even more egregious.
At one dark point it was widely asserted that it was a waste of time for
linguistics to study languages, since universals of language could be
directly intuited through introspection of one's own native language.
(Sort of like, one doesn't have to dissect thousands of cadavers to
understand the principles of anatomy-- one will do). Generalizations
proposed on the basis of data from a variety of languages could be
dismissed as mere facts about langauges which happen to be statistically
true-- as opposed to insights about the 'language faculty' which were
necessarily true. This has all changed now. Generative grammar in its
current form is largely a set of reactions to discoveries made by
empirically oriented schools. Optimality Theory is a response to
functionalism, Principles-and-Parameters a response to typology. What
has remained constant is that generativism still allows only one class
of explanation-- a genetic or biological one. Whatever universal
patterns in language structure are discovered, these are assumed
necessarily to be features of the innate human language ability, and the
ability itself is thought of as a body of knowledge of these strutures.
Functional explanations (economy or efficiency of communication) or
material ones (limitations on vocal/aural apparatus, or on memory) are
ruled out a priori as unworthy or uninteresting.
 
    In short I am highly sceptical of the way in which biological
analogies have been used in linguistics.  But of course I don't blame
biologists for this. The ultimate problem, as Dr. Ghesiln has hit upon,
is the ontology of language, that is to say, what IS it? In asking this
question to a bunch of linguists, our colleague is soon to discover, if
he hasn't already, that he has stumbled in among, not a group of sober
specialists, but a crowd of blind beggars arguing angrily about the
nature of an elephant.
 
    Well, here I will foolishly join this congress of the blind by
offering my own minority opinion: Language, as I see it (or as I grope
it), is neither an organ nor an organism, but a cultural artifact or a
tool. Our ability to learn, to use, even possibly to construct from
nothing this tool is due to genetically determined neurological
abilities unique to humans.  But the structural properties of the tool
are independent of the neurological structures which make it possible to
learn or use the tool. People have an innate ability, beyond that of
other animals, to build dwellings and structures of various types, and
these structures tend to have certain common structural properties-- for
example, a roof, something to support the roof. These properties can be
described, and 'explained' to some degree in functional (to keep the
rain out) and physical (gravity) terms.  The ability to build the
structure in the first place is rooted in the brain and is a product of
evolution. The question is, how does the genetic ability to construct an
artifact relate to the general or universal properties of the artifact.
It seems odd to me to assert, as most linguists do, that these things
are simply identical-- to assume in effect that the ability to build
things is encoded in the brain as innate knowledge of a set of universal
structural properties of buildings (the roof principle, the support
principle).  I conclude that analysis of structural properties of the
artifact will not necessarily yield any insight into the neurological
structures which construct or control the artifact, nor will knowledge
of the neurological structures necessarily provide a complete
explanation of the structural properties of the artifact (since
functional and material factors may also be relevant).
 
    At the risk of introducing yet another false language/biology
analogy, I'll close with a question. Language is possibly more analogous
to anthills, beehives, and birds' nest, than it is to ants, bees, or
birds. How do biologists now conceive the relationship between the
structural properties of beehives and the neurological structure of
bees? Do ants and bees have little blueprints in their ganglia? Is there
variation and change in the structure of beehives and anthills? If so,
can this be described in terms of selectional pressures, and, if so, is
this independent of mutation and speciation of the organisms involved,
or does it necessarily go in tandem with it?
 
-RR
 
Ghiselin, Michael wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original
> message----------------------------
>                Thanks for your very thoughtful commentary.  What you
>           say points out the fact that when we start asking what some
>           of these fundamental units are, they become increasingly
>           problematic; and when we try to compare across kinds of
>           systems the parallels are evident, but they too are
>           problematic.
>                The problems of what a species is and of what a
>           language is are not unusual.  Indeed I would be surprised to
>
>           find a theoretical term in any science that is not hard to
>           define in a way that pleases all the practitioners.  Small
>           wonder then, that we cannot easily find exact parallels
>           between the fundamental units of interest to linguists and
>           to biologists.  We can say that there are phonemes, words
>           etc., and we can say that there are nucleotide pairs ...,
>           but what we are looking at is hierarchical structure without
>
>           exact functional correspondence.  Geneticists do not agree
>           as to what a gene is, though they work with them and talk
>           about them all the time.
>                One point that I still would like clarified is the
>           relationship between the speaker of the language and the
>           language itself.  The speaker is a part of a language
>           community and the vocabulary, grammar etc. are parts of the
>           language.  The speakers may be said to know, understand,
>           speak, participate in, etc. the language.  But we usually do
>
>           not call them parts of the language.  There are a whole
>           range of related problems with respect to culture in
>           general.  The way Tylor defined "culture" it includes
>           concrete artifacts.  There must be an extensive literature
>           on such issues.  But such material as I have read (including
>
>           the 1952 review by Kroeber and Kluckhohn) does not really
>           face up to the ontological issues.
>           MG
 
 
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan


From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk  Mon Sep 14 15:23:07 1998
From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright)
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 11:23:07 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <35F55B07.C394295@fs.tufs.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <MON.14.SEP.1998.112307.EDT.ROGER.WRIGHT@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
>    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this list.
>Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as many
>of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many of
>the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and ill-defined
>as the foundational concepts in linguistics.
 
        The great value of these interesting discussions has been
in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that the
analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
seriously.
        It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't really
"structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
                                                        RW


From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp  Tue Sep 15 13:52:23 1998
From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe)
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 09:52:23 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <TUE.15.SEP.1998.095223.EDT.>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Roger Wright wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original
> message----------------------------
>
> >    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this
> list.
> >Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as
> many
> >of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many
> of
> >the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and
> ill-defined
> >as the foundational concepts in linguistics.
>
>         The great value of these interesting discussions has been
> in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that
> the
> analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
> seriously.
>         It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
> construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't
> really
> "structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
>                                                         RW
 
    I hadn't really thought of the construction industry, but I like the
analogy now that you mention it, maybe because I live in the country
with the largest public works budget in the world.  Linguistics has
always sought prestige through analogies with other fields, and now that
science has lost some of its lustre...
    Of course we always have to try to avoid getting trapped in  our
conceptual frameworks.  But I must admit I can't really see how one can
escape talking about language as a structure. Any theory which assumes
the existence in a language of subcategories (such as phonemes, or parts
of speech) and relationships between them (such as constraints on word
order, or paradigmatic contrasts) is assuming that language is a
strucuture.  It is hard for me to see how we can abandon this approach
and still have anything to say about the formal properties of languages.
Of course I am strongly sympathetic with the view that language isn't
ONLY a structure. There are things to be said about language and
cognition, language and communication, which perhaps can be said without
reference to form or structure.
    How about in anthropology, are structuralist approaches to
non-material culture still prominent, or has a better way been found?
 
-RR
 
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan


From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca  Wed Sep 16 10:42:23 1998
From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 06:42:23 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980914141214.6892H-100000@uxa.liv.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <WED.16.SEP.1998.064223.EDT.JHEWSON@MORGAN.UCS.MUN.CA>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Roger Wright wrote:
 
>         The great value of these interesting discussions has been
> in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that the
> analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
> seriously.
>         It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
> construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't really
> "structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
 
Agreed. Structures are entities that are created from parts that fit
together, parts that may have varying degrees of pre-fabrication. A
shelter in the woods has to be made from raw materials, whereas a house
includes all kinds of paradigmatic elements such as doors, windows, sinks,
bricks, 2 x 4's, shingles, etc.
 
Sentences are structures, and some languages have more pre-fabrication of
sentence elements than others.
 
The definition of a language as a set of sentences, which Bloomfield took
from the early Wittgenstein (in the _Tractatus_ (1919), heading 4.001) and
included in his 1926 `Set of Postulates', is demonstrably false: no child
learning a language learns a set of sentences. In fact languages don't
have sentences as Saussure pointed out long ago (CLG p.172: "la phrase ...
appartient a la parole, non a la langue"). Bloomfield's definition is
continued in Chomsky's work. Originally it was Chomsky's only definition
of a language (Syntactic Structures p.13); today the set of sentences
(utterances, actually, in Bloomfield) is Chomsky's E-language.
 
We use our languages, with all their paradigmatic possibilities, to create
sentences. A language has permanence, whereas a sentence does not.
 
The Prague School, and also Meillet, both influenced by Saussure, defined
a language as a system of systems. It was the definition that Jakobson
used throughout his lifetime. It would be interesting to determine what is
the difference between a system and a structure. 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


From resnik at umiacs.umd.edu  Wed Sep 16 10:45:07 1998
From: resnik at umiacs.umd.edu (Philip Resnik)
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 06:45:07 EDT
Subject: Univ of Maryland Undergraduate Essay Prize in Linguistics
Message-ID: <WED.16.SEP.1998.064507.EDT.RESNIK@UMIACS.UMD.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
  [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement.]
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND UNDERGRADUATE ESSAY PRIZE IN LINGUISTICS
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 
The University of Maryland Department of Linguistics is pleased to
announce the 1998 University of Maryland Undergraduate Essay Prize in
Linguistics, an international competition.
 
The prize of $1000 will be awarded for the best undergraduate student
essay on a topic in linguistics, and the winning essay will be
published in the 1999 University of Maryland Working Papers in
Linguistics.
 
Submissions may be in the areas of computational linguistics, formal
semantics, language acquisition, language change, lexical semantics,
neurolinguistics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and formal syntax.
 
The deadline for submissions is November 3, 1998.
 
Essay competition rules are as follows:
 
  Eligibility.
 
    Applicants must at the time of submission be enrolled at least half
    time in an undergraduate program of study leading to a bachelor's
    degree or equivalent, and must not already possess any degree in
    linguistics.  Essays should have been written within the previous or
    current academic year, and must represent the original work of
    the applicant.  Previously published essays will not be considered
    for the award.  Current and former students of the University of
    Maryland, College Park are ineligible.
 
  Deadline.
 
    Applicants must submit three (3) copies of the essay to the
    address listed below, to be RECEIVED no later than
    November 3, 1998.  Late submissions will be returned unopened.
 
  Length and format.
 
    Essays must be submitted in English, typed or word-processed in no
    smaller than 10-point font, single-sided, double-spaced, and on white
    paper, with at least 1-inch margins on all sides.  Applicants should
    use single-spaced endnotes rather than footnotes, and follow style
    guidelines of either the Modern Language Association (MLA) or the
    American Psychological Association (APA).  Essays must be no longer
    than twenty pages, excluding bibliography, including at most two
    pages of endnotes.  Essays not conforming to these instructions
    will not be considered.
 
    The applicant's name must not be included on the essay. Instead,
    include a cover sheet listing the title of the essay, applicant's
    name, address, telephone number, e-mail address (if available), school
    and program attending, year in the program, and the topic area or
    areas of the essay (taken from the list above).
 
Judging.
 
    All essays will be judged anonymously by the Faculty
    in Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
 
Award.
    The Essay Prize of $1000 will be awarded in January, 1999, and
    the winning essay included in the 1999 Maryland Working Papers in
    Linguistics.
 
    The Department reserves the right not to award the prize in a given
    year and may change the terms of the award for future competitions.
 
 
Submissions should be sent to:
 
  Undergraduate Essay Prize
  Department of Linguistics
  1401 Marie Mount Hall
  University of Maryland
  College Park, MD 20742-7505 USA
 
The Essay Prize Web page is:
 
  http://benjamin.umd.edu/prize98/
 
The University of Maryland Department of Linguistics page is:
 
  http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/Depts/Linguistics/
 
The Undergraduate Essay Prize Coordinator is:
 
  Philip Resnik
  resnik at benjamin.umd.edu
  (301) 405-8903
 
----------------------------------------------------------------


From mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org  Fri Sep 18 11:57:38 1998
From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 07:57:38 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <FRI.18.SEP.1998.075738.EDT.MGHISELIN@CASMAIL.CALACADEMY.ORG>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          To Benji Wald
 
               Your message of 9/4/98 arrived when it was inconvenient
          for me to answer, at least thoughtfully.
               My puzzle with respect to languages is only somewhat
          helped by the langue/parole contrast.  It is easy for a
          systematic zoologist to say that the relationship between an
          organism and his, her, or his and her species is that of
          part to whole.  A species is a sexually-reproducing
          community.  There are also language communities of which
          organisms, the speakers of the language, are parts.  Then
          one asks what langue and parole are and it would seem that
          parole is an activity and langue how that activity gets
          carried out.  This, however, does not give us what seem to
          be the analogues of organism and species, i.e., idiolect and
          language.  They seem to both be langue, but parole holds
          them together much as sex holds species together.  On the
          other hand idiolects and languages are behavioral and
          functional entities.  So we can describe them, just as we
          can describe organisms and species, in terms of their
          properties, which change during both ontogeny and phylogeny,
          but the properties of these entities are not the entities
          themselves.  It looks to me as if an idiolect is an
          organism's disposition to behave in a certain way, and a
          language a system of such dispositions that are mutually
          coadapted.  But I am still trying to think this through.  I
          do appreciate what you said about your interest not being
          the metaphysics but the empirical evidence that is relevant
          to solving the problem.  For me the exercise is very much an
          empirical matter.
 
          Michael Ghiselin


From urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com  Fri Sep 18 15:38:03 1998
From: urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com (Urban Lindqvist)
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 11:38:03 EDT
Subject: References
Message-ID: <FRI.18.SEP.1998.113803.EDT.URBAN.LINDQVIST@UPPSALA.MAIL.TELIA.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear list members,
 
I am looking for literature of a certain kind and I hope you are able to
supply me with some references.
First, I would like to find some sociolinguistic studies, preferably but not
necessarily in apparent time, focusing on phonologic/phonetic
variables/variants in word-final position. In connexion with this I am also
interested in literature dealing with word boundaries as parts of the
conditioning environment of sound changes as well as generalization of
sandhi
variants. Finally, I would be happy if somebody could direct me to
some studies of the more intimate details of compensatory lengthening, again
preferably in apparent time, where the different variants and their
behaviour
may be observed.
 
Regards,
 
Urban Lindqvist
urban.lindqvist at uppsala.mail.telia.com


From russo at inrete.it  Sat Sep 19 15:17:09 1998
From: russo at inrete.it (Sonia Cristofaro)
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 11:17:09 EDT
Subject: New website of Archivio Glottologico Italiano
Message-ID: <SAT.19.SEP.1998.111709.EDT.RUSSO@INRETE.IT>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
This is to inform that the website of the journal 'Archivio Glottologico
Italiano' is now located at the address
 
http://linguist.unipv.it/ArchivioGlottologicoItaliano.html


From lordearl at bigfoot.com  Tue Sep 22 11:37:30 1998
From: lordearl at bigfoot.com (Thomas Kent)
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 07:37:30 EDT
Subject: Historical Linguistics Books
Message-ID: <TUE.22.SEP.1998.073730.EDT.LORDEARL@BIGFOOT.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Members of the Group,
My name is Thomas Kent, I am a sixteen year old student who is very
interested in Historical Linguistics.
I was wondering whether anyone would be able to recommend a good
introductory text on the topic for me.
Also, in aim of teaching myself a little about historical linguistics, I
would like to study the history of a particular language.  Which language
would be best for this?
Yours sincerely,
Thoomas Kent.
 
===================================
                       Thomas V.T. Kent
hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rex que futurus.
lordearl at bigfoot.com         http://lords.notrix.de
===================================


From dyen at hawaii.edu  Thu Sep 24 21:48:22 1998
From: dyen at hawaii.edu (Isidore Dyen)
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 17:48:22 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
In-Reply-To: <v02140b01b1ffe645d1ac@[128.97.208.84]>
Message-ID: <THU.24.SEP.1998.174822.EDT.DYEN@HAWAII.EDU>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
With respect to using the term evolution for linguistic change I am
inclined to think it is appropriate, but of course its association with
the onward-upward character that goes with the term in biology must then
be avoided. As I see it, one of the main factors in linguistic change and
perhaps the main factor is the drive for efficiency in communication which
is dialectically resisted by the need for clarity so that efficiency does
not actually increase andthe actual level of clarity does not change.
Since however change is constant, I believe the term evolution is
appropriate.
 
I believe your characterization of mutual intelligibility as being an
arbitrary criterion is a misconception. After all it concerns
intercommunication, the primary function of language. The difficulty with
mutual intelligibility lies rather in applying it and improvements in that
area could be achieved if the importance of distinguishing languages from
each other could reach the level of attracting financial support. Failing
that we will have to get along with making judgments as we have until now.
 
As for entropy it could not be expected to be found in the structure of a
language since the energy input to maintain clarity prevents observable
change in the direction of disorganization. However within a language
regarded as a closed system, there is (for all practical purposes)
observable changes in the direction of disorganization in
dialectalization as diversification tending toward the shattering of a
language. The opposing force is the rate of interlocution; as that rate
is high it militates against diversification and if it is high
enough, promotes homogeneity and when it is low or decreases is
accompanied by increased dialectalization and if it reaches zero, may
be followed by language fission.
 
 On Wed, 19 Aug 1998,
bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> With regard to the cladistic discussion I hope it is worth me noting a
> point where linguists most generally agree that biological and linguistic
> evolution seem to be quite different, even to the extent that some
> linguists discourage use of the term "evolution" for linguistic changes
> which are matters of consensus in linguistic studies, such as the changes
> from Old t o current English, or from Latin to the current Romance
> languages, among many other cases.  (Excluded from consideration is the
> evolution of language from "pre-language", an issue which is not at all a
> matter of agreement among linguists, and which has only recently reentered
> serious linguistic discussion after a long period of banishment).
>
> It is in the matter of selectional pressures disfavoring certain lines of
> evolution and favoring others at certain times.  It is a generally held
> principle of linguists that all languages as systems are equal to all other
> languages as communicative systems, and that, with the exception of
> auxiliary languages (not a speaker's first language, maybe nobody's first
> language, e.g., in the case of pidgins), change does not make a language
> more suitable for survival as a communicative device.  Linguists also do
> not have a notion of complexity that would presume that any language, as a
> total system, is more "complex" than any other language.  The same can
> certainly not be said of biological entities (a separate point from the
> "survival" one).
>
> It seems that biological diversification is not motivated by survival;
> selection for survival operates on the diversification.  The motivating
> factor seems to be changes in the entire bio-system, ultimately tied to
> physical (including chemical) changes in environment.   No telling how far
> into the universe that ultimately leads.  The closest analog for selection
> pressures in language seems to be social, and may involve the total
> replacement of one language by another, so that one language fails to
> survive, never because it could not adopt to the communicative demands put
> on it, but because it could not find a social niche to allow its
> continuation.  Thus, many languages have disappeared without current trace
> (except for borrowings from them into surviving languages), and this
> continues to happen to surviving languages for socio-economic reasons.  In
> general then, I think linguists could accept an analogy between instability
> and change in languages and life forms on the basis of not well understood
> interruptions in the continuity of systems as they are reproduced (in
> language through childhood and even later learning, in biology through
> changes in genetic coding), but do not find selectional pressures analogous
> in language and life forms.
>
> in particular, the following would not be found analogous by linguists.
> Ghiselin writes:
> >               Mutation is universal among genetic systems, and we
> >          know that it is necessary because were it not the second law
> >          of thermodynamics would be false.
>
> If I understand the law referred to have to do with the "entropy" of
> systems, languages do not show recognisable signs of loss of systematic
> orderliness as they change.  That follows from the consensus principle that
> languages are equally systematic at all stages of their evolution.  At the
> same time, many, perhaps most, linguists believe that there are favored
> systems, so that one change in a system can favor a subsequent one.
> Genetic research probably suggests some analogies, but it is my impression
> that factors outside the system shared by a set of organisms are more
> frequently called upon in explaining the directions of biological change
> than in explaining the directions of linguistic change.  Nevertheless, both
> linguists and biologists are concerned with internal constraints on
> possible directions of change, according to the principles by which the
> systems are organised.
>
> He continues:
> >          the universality of change may be a law of nature, and not just
> >          a matter of contingent, historical fact.
>
> Historical facts at the proper level of abstraction and "laws of nature"
> can be controversial as mutually exclusive philosophical alternatives.  It
> is not clear that social change is either more or less arbitrary than
> linguistic change.  Social change does seem to involve differences in the
> complexity of particular social systems, e.g., production of surplus and
> the rise of cities, technological change, etc.  But, as I said, the
> linguistic systems that linguists usually investigate, i.e., grammatical
> systems, do not seem to vary in complexity.  Subsystems of grammatical
> systems can indeed vary in complexity, but there seems to be a
> cross-linguistic balance of complexity when it comes to considering the
> interaction of sub-systems in the overall grammatical system of a language.
> Linguists do not agree on a basis to think otherwise.
>
> >               Switching to philosophy, one interesting point about
> >          how you conceptualize the problem is that you conceive of
> >          languages as systems in this sense.  They are concrete,
> >          particular things, with interactions among their parts, that
> >          evolve as such.  One way to characterize such a position is
> >          to say that it takes the individuality of languages very
> >          seriously.
>
> In the same way that biologists find the concept of individual species
> useful, though the criteria for membership in a set differ from language to
> biological species.  I think some respondents already discussed the
> commonality in terms of continuity (despite change) in successive members
> of a set.
>
> It is very easy for somebody who treats a whole
> >          as if it were its parts viewed atomistically to overlook
> >          such deeper connections.  That is part of the problem with
> >          those who want to think of languages as defined by mutual
> >          intelligibility.
>
> Mutual intelligibility is an arbitrary criterion for membership in a
> particular language set from a historical linguistic point of view, as you
> have been informed.  Continuity is the criterion used.  There is the level
> of species in biology at which a criterial discontinuity can be posited on
> the basis of ability to reproduce (cross-fertilise).  That seems to be a
> cleaner cut-off point than where mutual intelligibility decays.  Still,
> even on this list, we had recent discussion of the possibility that mutual
> intelligibility allows change to spread from one variety of a language to
> another, but that lack of mutual intelligibility blocks it.  That seems
> quite logical, and could be construed as analogous to cross-fertilisation.
> Its only weak point is that changes can spread across mutually
> unintelligible languages through the agency of intervening bilingualism,
> probably most often communal rather than isolated individuals.  That ends
> the analogy between mutual intelligibility and cross-fertilisation with
> respect to continuity in evolution.
>


From goertzen at rrnet.com  Mon Sep 28 15:45:41 1998
From: goertzen at rrnet.com (Stanley Goertzen)
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 11:45:41 EDT
Subject: Cladistic language concepts
Message-ID: <MON.28.SEP.1998.114541.EDT.GOERTZEN@RRNET.COM>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Michael Ghiselin (Friday, September 18, 1998 6:57 AM) wrote:
[...]
>It looks to me as if an idiolect is an 
>organism's disposition to behave in a certain way, 
>and a language a system of such dispositions that are 
>mutually coadapted.
[...]
 
Having just read (and still struggling to understand) Noam Chomsky's 
objection to attempts to define language in this way (as E-language 
rather than I-language), responses to his arguments would be helpful 
to me.  Chomsky wrote:  
 
"It is common among philosophers, particularly those influenced 
by Wittgenstein, to hold that 'knowledge of language is an ability', 
which can be exercised by speaking, understanding, reading, 
talking to oneself: 'to know a language just is to have the ability to 
do these and similar things.'  Some go further and hold that an 
ability is expressible in dispositional terms, so that language 
becomes, as Quine described it, 'a complex of present dispositions 
to verbal behavior.'  If we accept this further view, then two people 
who are disposed to say different things under given circumstances 
speak different languages, even if they are identical twins with exactly  
the same history, who speak the same language by any sensible criteria 
we might establish.  There are so many well-known problems with this 
conception that I will simply drop it, and consider the vaguer proposal 
that knowledge of language is a practical ability to speak and understand 
(Michael Dummet, Anthony Kenny, and others, in one or another form)."  
.... 
"A rather striking feature of the widespread conception of language 
as a system of abilities, or a habit system of some kind, or a complex 
of dispositions, is that it has been completely unproductive."  
-Noam Chomsky, "Language and Problems of Knowledge," in 
Martinich, ed., _The Philosophy of Language_ (2nd Ed., 1990). 
 
Sincerely
Stanley Goertzen


From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk  Wed Sep 30 15:22:08 1998
From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 11:22:08 EDT
Subject: Q: oblique cognates
Message-ID: <WED.30.SEP.1998.112208.EDT.LARRYT@COGS.SUSX.AC.UK>

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I am looking for a term for a certain non-canonical type of
cognation.
 
One non-canonical variety is as follows.  Latin <dent-> `tooth'
requires a PIE *<dent->.  English `tooth' and Greek <odont-> require
a PIE *<dont->.  Gothic <tunth> requires a PIE *<dnt->.  The several
forms are therefore not strictly descended from a single ancestral
form, but rather from variant forms of a single root.  Such forms as
the Latin, English and Gothic ones have been called `oblique
cognates' in the literature.  Fine.
 
But there's another case.  English `head' is directly cognate with
Latin <caput> `head'.  However, Spanish <cabeza> does not descend
directly from <caput>, but rather from a suffixed derivative of this.
Therefore the English and Spanish words are not directly cognate,
even though they are indirectly cognate in an important way.  Is
there a label for this kind of cognation?  What would you prefer to
call the relationship between the English and Spanish words?
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
England
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk