Uniformitarian Principle

[Stanley Friesen]

At 09:47 AM 7/20/01 +0000, Douglas G Kilday wrote:

>That wouldn't be a very intelligent assumption. Nature is full of
>discontinuous processes like earthquakes, landslides, and lightning bolts
>which do _not_ involve any change in physical laws.

However, processes involving cross-generation transfer rarely are so.  It
takes time to learn a language, and too much change between generations is
prevented by the requirement of communication between parent and child.

>It has been tacitly assumed that a _single_ rate of change is valid.

No, it has been concluded that a *range* of rates is valid - probably
following something resembling a normal curve, with the larger outliers
progressively rarer.

>Larry Trask's example of Basque, John McLaughlin's example of Comanche,
>and the well-known Great Vowel Shift of Middle English have two things in
>common. They involve systematic shifting of phonemes over a finite
>interval (50-100 years) and no apparent correlation with external
>(non-linguistic) factors.

And these are probably close the maximum possible rates of change possible
without isolating the children from their parents.  Changes much faster
than these would seriously disrupt communication.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net