language and biology

[Stanley Friesen]

At 01:29 AM 2/22/00 -0500, X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>But is this question relevant to the issue of whether recent biological
>models may help in linguistic analysis?

I was talking *methods*, not models.  (OR at least I was talking about the
mathematical features of models of change in general).

>Does really doesn't matter if you classify languages as biological phenomena
>or not?

It gives insight into what *sorts* of processes are likely to occur.

It suggests that sharp, well-defined boundaries are unlikely, indeed
virtually impossible, which was my original point.  It suggests that using
analogies based on discrete physical systems are likely to be unproductive.

All electrons are *identical* - absolutely interchangeable in all respects:
this is fundamentally different than biological systems, where no two of
*anything* are ever more than similar.  Thus one must give up treating
languages as simple discrete entities, and deal with them a "fuzzy"
biological entities, for which "same" means "not enough different to matter
for the present purpose (whatever that happens to be)".

>It would seem that if you are after 'genetic' relatedness, biology provides
>pretty good models for such concepts associated with the transfer of
>attributes by 'descent' as wll as by other mechanisms.  The analogy may not
>be perfect,

No analogy ever is - but this is *especially* true when biology is involved.

> but the prototypical idea of attributes passing from parental to
>filial generations must come from biology.  In fact, I suspect the whole idea
>of relatedness among languages is by analogy from the biological notion of
>inheritance.  (Although I'm conscious that Grimm predates Mendel.)

Ideas of inheritance long predate Mendel - they just used a different model.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com