Language is made up of independent parts? (was Re: Genetic Descent/Haitian Creole)

[Robert Whiting]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2001 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 6/22/2001 10:44:59 PM, larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>writes:

[SL]

>>> Words and morphs are not like biological cells.  Each word or
>>>piece of morphology does not contain a hologram of the entire
>>>language in its DNA. We cannot clone an entire language out of a
>>>single word or verb morphology.  A language is made up of many
>>>totally independent parts. Why should the "genetics" of one part
>>>affect the "genetics" of another part.

"A language is made up of many totally independent parts."  This
is your first mistake (in this posting).

A language is a fully integrated system.  All the parts are
interdependent.  You just think that language is made up of
individual, "totally independent," parts because the interactions
between the parts are so complex and operate on so many different
levels that linguists (or others) break language into individual
parts in order to make it possible to study language without
having to deal with the incredible complexity of the overall
system.  This is called reductionism.  It is a way to study
complex systems by separating out what are apparently subsystems
and studying these subsystems in isolation.  Thus you get works
entitled "the phonology of X", "the morphology of X", "the syntax
of X", etc. where "X" is your favorite dialect, language,
language family, and so on.

The problem with this is that specialists in the various
subsystems sometimes forget that their particular speciality
is not the entire system and treat it as if it were.  Those who
are easily led astray are, of course, led astray by this and
think that the subsystems are "totally independent."  Then you
get claims of a hierarchical structure in language where the
various levels cannot affect each other.  Thus "morphology can't
affect phonology" or "syntax can't affect morphology."  The
existence and common use of terms like "morphophonemic" or
"morphophonetic" and "morpho-syntactical" make such claims a
priori unlikely.

But spoken language is a system for expressing meaning through
sounds.  Therefore meaning and sound have to be interrelated.
Saying that they are not is just a way of avoiding the complexity
of the reality.  It may be possible to study phonology,
morphology, and syntax separately (if that's how you want to
break up language into parts), but you can't use just one of them
to communicate meaning because that's not the way language works.
Language may be studied as independent subsystems, but it works as
one single fully integrated system.

Another reason for separating languages into these levels is that
that seems to be the way that children learn language.  First
sounds (phonology), then words (morphology), and finally how to
put words together to make grammatically correct sentences
(syntax).  Thus there seems to be some natural progression from
level to level in L1 (first language) acquisition.  But children
haven't learned the language until they have mastered all three
and integrated them into one system.

Here is what Anttila 1989 has to say on the subject (p. 320),
albeit in a slightly different context:

  All levels of grammar are intimately tied together, and we have
  seen that various grammatical facts can condition sound change.
  There cannot be syntax without sound in the actual functioning
  of the language.  Thus the best target for genetic
  classification still remains the middle of language. ... To
  ensure that we do not float too high, our units of comparison
  have to be anchored to the lower levels by sound
  correspondences.

So "A language is made up of many totally independent parts" is
simply a false premise.

[LT]

>><<This is not the way we use 'genetic' in linguistics.  We do
>>not apply the term to individual elements within a language.  We
>>can no more ask whether the English word 'pity' is genetic or not
>>than we can ask whether it is green and squishy.>>

>Well, that's fine.  And I know a guy who refuses to call his
>mother "mom". But at least he has an explanation for it.

And is his explanation objective or subjective?  I once saw a
guy pitch a no-hitter and still lose the game, but what does
either one have to do with the subject?  It's just another of
your non sequiturs.

>Is there a more "pithy" answer to why there can only be one
>genetic ancestor than this one?

Yes.  Genetically related languages were once the same language.

Since it is not possible for two languages to be the same
language without actually being the same language, there can be
only one genetic ancestor for genetically related languages.  QED.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi