Socilological vs natural selection (ex Re: The Neolithic Hypothesis)

[Robert Whiting]

On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

<snip>

> >For one thing, forms can be taken over for reasons like prestige
> >of the source language or dialect, or because the speakers find a
> >word with a sound or meaning that they just happen to like in another
> >language, and there is, as far as I know, no mechanism that duplicates
> >this in biological change.

> Sexual selection?

No, Lamarckian transmission.  A language can take a form from a
completely unrelated language just because it sounds good in its
speakers mouths.  A biological organism cannot imitate a feature
that it sees in another species and expect it to be passed on to
its offspring.  The way that language is passed from generation to
generation is simply different from the way that a biological
organism replicates its genotype.

> >Secondly, sociological change does not
> >have to be survival-enhancing (people, especially as a group, don't
> >always know what is good for them, and even if they do, they don't
> >always do it), whereas biological change, because of natural selection,
> >will preserve survival-enhancing mutations by its very nature.

> True, although I think most biological changes are in fact
> survival-neutral.  But there is indeed no "survival of the
> fittest" about language change.  The emphasis of my analogy was
> on the side of genetic/linguistic drift, occurring for "no"
> reason (or at least not for reasons that have anything to do with
> their being selected).

Indeed, I expect that most biological changes are survival-neutral
as well.  And I don't say that linguistic/biological analogies are
completely without value.  What I say is that it is important to
know where the analogies break down so that one does not get drawn
into the trap of trying to explain linguistic change as the same
mechanism as biological change.  Languages just don't have DNA.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi