Cladistic language concepts

[Johanna Nichols]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear fellow HISTLING readers,
 
I am forwarding to the list this inquiry from biologist Michael Ghiselin.
He is not on the list, so if you reply to the list please also copy him at
the address(es) at the end.
 
I too would like to know where historical linguists stand on the issue and
what we can consider to be received view.
 
Thanks.
 
Johanna Nichols
 
>Date: Tue, 28 Jul 98 08:45:03 PST
>From: mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org (Ghiselin, Michael)
>To: johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu
>Subject: language concepts
>
>          Dear Dr. Nichols:
>               I would be most grateful if you would post the
>          following message on HISTLING for me.
>
>               In my recent book METAPHYSICS AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
>          (State University of New York Press, 1997) I address a wide
>          range of topics related to the philosophy of classification.
>          Among these is the analogy between languages and species, a
>          topic that has interested both linguists and biologists
>          since the days of Schleicher and Darwin.  I remarked that
>          Old English, Middle English, and Modern English are not
>          different languages, but rather stages of a single
>          historical entity.  They are analogous to what are called
>          "chronospecies" in paleontology.
>               One might wish to contest this claim, and there are all
>          sorts of problems and perhaps I should have invoked Greek as
>          an example.  I would welcome a discussion with linguists on
>          any aspect of this and related questions.  For the moment,
>          however, I need a somewhat different kind of information.  A
>          philosopher named David Stamos has recently denounced this
>          view (Biology and Philosophy 13:433-470).  He writes:
>          "Indeed it seems to me that few outside the modern species
>          problem would wish to defend a _cladistic language concept_,
>          in other words the position that a language which undergoes
>          'infinite evolution' without branching is numerically the
>          same language...."  He thinks that unless two organisms can
>          communicate their idiolects are not elements of the same
>          language, though he does not put it in quite such terms.
>          Those who know about ring species and the like will see some
>          interesting connections here.
>               Unfortunately I have only read a few dozen books on
>          linguistics and that was some time ago.  But I got the
>          impression that a cladistic, or evolutionary, language
>          concept, such that the languages are in fact lineages, has
>          been widely, if not generally, accepted.  The few books that
>          I have consulted lately seem to have presupposed it, to the
>          point of not bothering to consider the alternatives.  I am a
>          natural scientist, and I do not wish to make an empirical
>          claim unless it can be backed up by facts.  But it is not
>          obvious where to get the information I need, so I thought I
>          would ask a lot of linguists.  I need to know how widely
>          something like a cladistic language concept is now, and
>          historically has been, accepted by linguists.  Even if it is
>          rejected, do they grant that such a position is reasonable?
>           Also, is there a good discussion of the issues in the
>          literature.  Any suggestions that linguists might want to
>          pass on to me would be most appreciated.  And of course I
>          would be interested in discussing some of the wider issues.
>
>          Sincerely,
>          Michael T. Ghiselin
>          Center for the History and Philosophy of Science
>          California Academy of Sciences
>          Golden Gate Park
>          San Francisco, California 94118
>          mghiselin at calacademy.org
>          (If that fails try mghiselin at casmail.calacademy.org
>
 
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Johanna Nichols
Professor
Department of Slavic Languages
Mailcode 2979
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
 
Phone:  (1) (510) 642-1097 (direct)
        (1) (510) 642-2979 (messages)
Fax:    (1) (510) 642-6220 (departmental)
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