Origin & Evolution of Languages (was: Sociological Linguistics)

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

Steven Schaufele wrote:

[ moderator snip ]

> Really???? Is this how people are using the terminology?????  Strange;
> i've been routinely using the word `evolve'/`evolution' to refer to the
> process whereby, e.g., Modern English derives from Middle English etc.
> Why, just yesterday i was lecturing my sophomores on the centralization
> of diphthongs on Martha's Vineyard, and explicitly referring to this as
> an example of linguistic `evolution'.  Am i WAY off track here
> terminologically?  Maybe it's time somebody (me, since i'm the one doing
> it) asked for a show of hands.  How many historical linguists reserve
> the lexeme `evolve' for the restricted sense that John allows?  How many
> would allow it for the process whereby a recognizably new language
> (e.g., Modern English) arises from a pre-existing language (e.g., Middle
> English)?  And what about intermediate gradations between these
> extremes?

I'll add a few bits of evidence to this, even though my vote's been counted.
Take a look at the historical linguistics textbooks.  They all use the term
'change' to account for everything historical.

Terry Crowley, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics, 2nd ed, 1992, Oxford.
Contents headings:  "Language Change", "Sound Change", "Ordering of Changes",
"Phonemic Change", "Phonetic Change", etc.  In looking at his chapter on
subgrouping, for example, I see "changed to", "derived from", and "descended
from", but never "evolved from".  The only context in which he uses "evolve" is
in an appropriate context of the rise of a creole from a pidgin, or of the
initial rise of a pidgin.  In this case "evolve" is perfectly appropriate,
since a pidgin is a greatly simplified language that came from pieces of
substrate and superstrate languages and a creole is a fully complex human
language.

David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 1987, Cambridge.
In section 54, Language change, the word "evolution" never occurs.  Instead
Crystal uses terms like "split from", "diverged from", etc.

I briefly scanned half a dozen other texts on historical linguistics and found
the same situation.  The words "evolve/evolution" are never used with respect
to the change over time from one fully modern, complex human language to
another.

I quote from one of my personal heroes--Mary Haas--in The Prehistory of
Languages, 1969, Mouton. (pg. 13):  "The 'prehistory of languages' is not to be
confused with a different topic which might be called the 'prehistory of
language'....This means that language may very well have been slowly evolving
over hundreds of thousands of years....Our concern here, however, is with what
may be called the 'prehistory of languages'."  This is the last use of the term
"evolve" in her book.  On pg 33, she writes, "If we turn the whole thing round
and look at it from the other direction we see that the daughter languages are
not only different from each other but also from the protolanguage.  We
describe this differentiation by calling it 'linguistic change'."

Recently, the now moribund Evolution of Language list came to a general
consensus (Pat Ryan may have disagreed) exactly along these traditional lines,
namely, that "language evolution" be reserved for the animal to human
development of language and "language change" for the traditionally understood
definition of "language change" as the accumulation of grammatical and lexical
differences that eventually renders two speech communities unable to
communicate with one another through their native tongues.

John McLaughlin
Utah State University