Philologists' metaphors [was Re: language and biology]

[Richard M. Alderson III]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2000, Steve Long (X99Lynx at aol.com) wrote:

> 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.)  And clearly the notion of strata in languages
> must have been a concept borrowed from geology.

It is, _ab origine_, a biological metaphor, but one much older than Mendel:
I'll remind everyone that (Indo-European) historical linguistics was once known
as comparative philology, and that the comparative method as applied to a set
of languages descends from that of the manuscript studies of the philologists,
who used the metaphor of a family tree to describe the descent of manuscript
recensions.  It wasn't so much *biological* inheritance as inheritance _per se_
that was the model.

As for the notion of strata, that is an explicit borrowing from geology, one
made in the 20th Century.  Prior to that time, there was a vague notion of
"influence", but no explicit metaphor.

								Rich Alderson