Evolution, and 'functional' + 'social'

[Mikael Parkvall]

Dan Everett wrote:

>I suppose that, if one could show that there is a lot of syntax which is
>nothing more than diachronic detritus, with no contribution to
>communication, then one might maintain that Creoles, being newer, are
>'simpler' in having less 'trash'.

Yes, that's exactly it. Although Dan clearly doesn't agree with me, I glad
to see that he does get my point. The most crucial difference between
DeGraff and me is that he doesn't believe that creoles are "young"
languages, but rather that they are daugters of their languages in the same
way as French is a daughter of Latin.

A problem, of course, is how much is "much"? Again, I would never claim
that most of a languages structure is communicatively useless. But I do
maintain that significant parts of it are indeed "diachronic detritus". All
languages have their quirks, be it in the form of irregularities,
suppletion, portmanteau morphs, articulatorily unmotivated allomorphy,
semantically unfounded (from a synchronic point of view) noun
classification, and so on. The fact that much of this is tossed over board
in pidginisation and is not reinvented in creolisation is, I think, a good
indication that it doesn't serve much of a purpose.

As for the expressiveness of human languages, no one has of course been
able to prove thet they are all equally expressive. Until this is done
(which is most likely "never"), I have no problem with the axiomatic
assumption that they are indeed all equally expressive. My experience,
however, is that most linguists have not reflected much on the relationship
between "complex" and "expressive", and therefore tend to believe that it
automatically follows that all languages are equally complex. I can't see
any motivation for this second assumption. A simple example to show that
the two don't go hand in hand: Pig latin is more complex than English, in
having an extra rule. But it is not more expressive, since the sum of
possible sentences in Pig Latin equals the sum of possible sentences in
English.


Mikael Parkvall