Cladistic language concepts

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
I think you have understood what I was aiming at. As for the family-tree
problem, that has to be separated into a theoretical problem and a
practical problem.
 
The first is easier to handle. It depends on the prohibition of mixing.
If languages can divide, but not mix, the fami.y-tree diagram applies.
Then
multiple branching from the same point can only occur if they
a resimultaneous. Practically however Only well-determined branches can be
found with the consequence that multiple apparently simultaneous
branchings result because the time-determinations cannot be fine enough.
In principle this view of the family-tree can apply to bioology witholut
difficulty if different species are not permitted to interbreed.
As for the reference to my article I can't give to you now, but I can
about three weeks from now at Dyen at hawaii.edu. The book has been
published.
 
On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Ghiselin, Michael wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>           Dear Dr. Dyen,
>                Please accept my thanks for your thoughtful response to
>           my query about cladistic language concepts and what might be
>           called "chrono-languages."  I have already received some
>           good commentary from a couple of other linguists, and these
>           preliminary responses are most encouraging.
>                Your way of looking at these matters is somewhat
>           different from that of my other informants but basically you
>           all seem to agree that mere evolution does not cause a
>           language to be replaced by another language.  You suggest
>           that one might wish to speak of a chronoperson, but unless I
>           am mistaken you would not consider such stages as different
>           persons in the sense that two siblings are.
>                As I see it your solution is to treat languages as
>           nexus or concatinations of idiolects, united by actual or
>           potential mutual intelligibility, and to get a diachronic
>           language concept you pass backward across generations.  It
>           is of some interest that in my book I refer to
>           intercompatibility of organisms within a species
>           as comparable to what we get in computer systems.  Yes, the
>           notion of a network is a bit hard to explicate, but what you
>           say about them makes a lot of sense to me.
>                You mention your commentary on such matters in a
>           Festschrift for Hoenigswald.  If it has been published I
>           would appreciate a reference.
>           Sincerely,
>           Michael Ghiselin
>