Cladistic language concepts

[bwald]

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With regard to the cladistic discussion I hope it is worth me noting a
point where linguists most generally agree that biological and linguistic
evolution seem to be quite different, even to the extent that some
linguists discourage use of the term "evolution" for linguistic changes
which are matters of consensus in linguistic studies, such as the changes
from Old to current English, or from Latin to the current Romance
languages, among many other cases.  (Excluded from consideration is the
evolution of language from "pre-language", an issue which is not at all a
matter of agreement among linguists, and which has only recently reentered
serious linguistic discussion after a long period of banishment).
 
It is in the matter of selectional pressures disfavoring certain lines of
evolution and favoring others at certain times.  It is a generally held
principle of linguists that all languages as systems are equal to all other
languages as communicative systems, and that, with the exception of
auxiliary languages (not a speaker's first language, maybe nobody's first
language, e.g., in the case of pidgins), change does not make a language
more suitable for survival as a communicative device.  Linguists also do
not have a notion of complexity that would presume that any language, as a
total system, is more "complex" than any other language.  The same can
certainly not be said of biological entities (a separate point from the
"survival" one).
 
It seems that biological diversification is not motivated by survival;
selection for survival operates on the diversification.  The motivating
factor seems to be changes in the entire bio-system, ultimately tied to
physical (including chemical) changes in environment.   No telling how far
into the universe that ultimately leads.  The closest analog for selection
pressures in language seems to be social, and may involve the total
replacement of one language by another, so that one language fails to
survive, never because it could not adopt to the communicative demands put
on it, but because it could not find a social niche to allow its
continuation.  Thus, many languages have disappeared without current trace
(except for borrowings from them into surviving languages), and this
continues to happen to surviving languages for socio-economic reasons.  In
general then, I think linguists could accept an analogy between instability
and change in languages and life forms on the basis of not well understood
interruptions in the continuity of systems as they are reproduced (in
language through childhood and even later learning, in biology through
changes in genetic coding), but do not find selectional pressures analogous
in language and life forms.
 
in particular, the following would not be found analogous by linguists.
Ghiselin writes:
>               Mutation is universal among genetic systems, and we
>          know that it is necessary because were it not the second law
>          of thermodynamics would be false.
 
If I understand the law referred to have to do with the "entropy" of
systems, languages do not show recognisable signs of loss of systematic
orderliness as they change.  That follows from the consensus principle that
languages are equally systematic at all stages of their evolution.  At the
same time, many, perhaps most, linguists believe that there are favored
systems, so that one change in a system can favor a subsequent one.
Genetic research probably suggests some analogies, but it is my impression
that factors outside the system shared by a set of organisms are more
frequently called upon in explaining the directions of biological change
than in explaining the directions of linguistic change.  Nevertheless, both
linguists and biologists are concerned with internal constraints on
possible directions of change, according to the principles by which the
systems are organised.
 
He continues:
>          the universality of change may be a law of nature, and not just
>          a matter of contingent, historical fact.
 
Historical facts at the proper level of abstraction and "laws of nature"
can be controversial as mutually exclusive philosophical alternatives.  It
is not clear that social change is either more or less arbitrary than
linguistic change.  Social change does seem to involve differences in the
complexity of particular social systems, e.g., production of surplus and
the rise of cities, technological change, etc.  But, as I said, the
linguistic systems that linguists usually investigate, i.e., grammatical
systems, do not seem to vary in complexity.  Subsystems of grammatical
systems can indeed vary in complexity, but there seems to be a
cross-linguistic balance of complexity when it comes to considering the
interaction of sub-systems in the overall grammatical system of a language.
Linguists do not agree on a basis to think otherwise.
 
>               Switching to philosophy, one interesting point about
>          how you conceptualize the problem is that you conceive of
>          languages as systems in this sense.  They are concrete,
>          particular things, with interactions among their parts, that
>          evolve as such.  One way to characterize such a position is
>          to say that it takes the individuality of languages very
>          seriously.
 
In the same way that biologists find the concept of individual species
useful, though the criteria for membership in a set differ from language to
biological species.  I think some respondents already discussed the
commonality in terms of continuity (despite change) in successive members
of a set.
 
It is very easy for somebody who treats a whole
>          as if it were its parts viewed atomistically to overlook
>          such deeper connections.  That is part of the problem with
>          those who want to think of languages as defined by mutual
>          intelligibility.
 
Mutual intelligibility is an arbitrary criterion for membership in a
particular language set from a historical linguistic point of view, as you
have been informed.  Continuity is the criterion used.  There is the level
of species in biology at which a criterial discontinuity can be posited on
the basis of ability to reproduce (cross-fertilise).  That seems to be a
cleaner cut-off point than where mutual intelligibility decays.  Still,
even on this list, we had recent discussion of the possibility that mutual
intelligibility allows change to spread from one variety of a language to
another, but that lack of mutual intelligibility blocks it.  That seems
quite logical, and could be construed as analogous to cross-fertilisation.
Its only weak point is that changes can spread across mutually
unintelligible languages through the agency of intervening bilingualism,
probably most often communal rather than isolated individuals.  That ends
the analogy between mutual intelligibility and cross-fertilisation with
respect to continuity in evolution.