the meaning of "genetic relationship"

[bwald]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Isidore Dyen writes:
 
>Theoretically (and by
>definition) two languages are interrelated (related to each other) if they
>separately continue what was once a unitary (but not necessarily uniform)
>language.
 
The distinction between "unitary" and "uniform" leads to problems, as we'll
see.  For the moment, I suppose that "not uniform" is mentioned because all
observable "languages" are of that kind.  At the same time, most of them
are assumed to have evolved from a single "system".  Already some hedging
is necessary since it is problematic that "Black English/Ebonics" or
whatever you call it, is descended "unitarily" along with "the King's
English" (and "Webster's"), and Sranan is so different that from most
"Englishes" that the issue doesn't even arise in a useful way.
 
Dyen continues:
 
>To demonstrate that it is likely that two languages continue the
>same unitary language it is necessary to show that they exhibit systematic
>correspondences, better called collateral correspondences to distinguish
>them from lineal correspondences that a language shares with its earlier
>stages. It is these separate lineal correspondences that form the
>collateral correspondences that are used in the reconstruction of forms of
>the original unitary language.
 
Fine.  And collateral correspondences work for much of the BE and Sranan
*lexicon* with other "English".  But the "whole" I referred to that Dyen
quotes (see below) includes morphology, syntax etc, for which BE is
problematic in some cases, and Sranan is more generally unlikely (and no
one tries to derive Sranan syntax from Old English, let alone
Indo-European).
 
(NB.  I'm taking liberties with Sranan as "English" for the sake of Dyen's
points on  genetic relationship, since no one considers Sranan "English"
(as far as I know, certainly not the speakers, or those familiar with the
language).  Maybe we should be discussing whether "Flemish" is "Dutch"?  Or
whether Catalan and Provencal are the "same" language?  I'm anticipating
Dyen's mutual intelligibility criterion for a "unitary" "language"
(discussed below).
 
Dyen goes on to later say:
 
>...speaking about languages as 'wholes' is not loose talk.
 
I said it was, with respect to the assumption of genetic relationship on
the basis of partial reconstruction (usually of some lexical material),
which is what he is responding to in context .  He immediately continues to
say
 
> A  language, technically as opposed to a dialect, is a bounded chain of pairs
>of mutually intelligible dialects. It has a boundary that it shares with
>each other language since none of its dialects is mutually intelligible
>with any of theirs.
 
The last statement is false.  There is no way to set a boundary to
distinguish one "language" from *some* other on the basis of mutual
intelligibility.  There is no "technical" sense of the word "language" that
can do this in practice, i.e., that corresponds to something observable
and/or, in some way, testable.  It is a vacuous attempt at a definition of
"language" (in a "technical" sense).  Historical linguists do not concern
themselves technically with the notion of "mutual intelligibility".  As
soon as we have lack of "uniformity" we already have the possibility
(indeed the virtual certainty) of "mutual unintelligbility" on some point
or other.  That has nothing to do with whether we are dealing with two
"languages" or two "dialects" of ONE language.  The claim made in the last
statement is not helpful, as far as I can see.  Is it meant to apply to the
difference between obviously distinct languages like "English" and
"Chinese" and/or to distinct related branches like "Slavic" and "Germanic"?
That is not a problem, and it is not related to the problems I raised
above.
 
Meanwhile, he continues:
 
>In this sense it is a whole. What you speak of as
>'genetically related' parts--with the implication that some parts are not
>'genetically related'--are more commonly called 'cognate' or 'shared
>inheritances'.
 
Obviously "languages" descend from "wholes".  The problem is that their
parts may descend from the parts of different "wholes", and to some extent
they always do. Just how much of a "language" continues the "whole" of some
earlier single language is determined by extensive research -- never
completed, but sometimes overwhelmingly favoring one former "whole" over
others.  My point was that you don't know how much of an observed language
descends from some former single "whole" until you do the research.  The
historical literature on syntax, and to a lesser extent on phonology, is
loaded with suggestions about "borrowing" as motivation or actuation for
this or that change.  That already presupposes (not always validly) that
"inheritance" has already been established for relevant, though different,
points.  "Relevant but different", now how does that work?  The most
vulnerable assumption, I think Dyen would concede, is that if much
vocabulary and even some morphology, is shared by two "languages" then they
*must be* genetically related as WHOLES even if most of their syntaxes are
historically unrelated.  (The "bad" literature, e.g., attempting to
exclusively derive peculiarities of Afrikaans from random localised Dutch
dialects, or BE from random localised British dialects, shows the dogmatic
operation of such assumptions; they turn out to be historically
problematic, and the least that can be said is that they show that whatever
changes they are used to explain are presumably "possible" *internal*
changes in the some variety of the "language" at issue.  Beyond that, a
factual historical account of the evolution of the varieties in question
remains problematic, once the methodological dogma is dismissed as
misleading.)
 
Next,
>The remainders are composed of individual inheritances and
>innovations, the latter including borrowings.
 
No conceptual problem here.  Much practical problem.
 
>The reason interrelated languages are treated as wholes is that each
>represents a separate continuation of the original unitary language via a
>succession of native speakers, their separation occurring at the moment
>the last cross-pair of mutually intelligible speakers had vanished.
 
As might be assumed from what I said above, this is not an interesting or
even practical criterion for "language".  It only serves my suspicion that
Dyen has major = unproblematic branching in a tree model in mind.  The
changes themselves are what's most interesting in historical linguistics,
and what one change has to do with another -- if anything -- often a
difficult problem to solve.  This has nothing to do with the difference
between "dialects" and "languages", I repeat here for emphasis.  Of course,
loss of mutual intelligibility with time, presumably accumulation of
changes, is also interesting, but has hardly been studied.  As I said
before, it is particularly interesting to study within a SINGLE "language".
Branching becomes problematic when one branch shares features mutually
excluded between two other branches and both are innovative features.  Then
we have a branching problem which is identical to the ubiquitous branching
problems in classifying "mutually intelligible" dialects of a single
"language".
 
>It is an assumption of the comparative method that different languages do
>not mix (under natural circumstances).
 
That assumption is known not to be valid, notwithstanding the resistance
that cannot resist asserting that mixture is "rare". (Since code-switching
is extremely common, the assertion seems to claim that mixture does not
arise from grammatically conditioned code-switching.)  BTW, without pencil
and paper, mixing can only occur under natural circumstances.  One cannot
intentionally spontaneously mix languages the way they have arisen in
nature, e.g., Michif, Aleut-Russian, whatever, i.e., switch between
languages on the basis of the grammatical category.
 
Creoles are either aberrant
>dialects if they are still part of a chain with other dialects or
>different languages if they are not.
 
What "chain"?  Is this the chain of mutual intelligibility?  If so, how
does that have anything to do with the "unitary" origin of the "creole"
within that chain?  Maybe Dyen is thinking of some kind of relatively
radical "restructuring" which he might insist on viewing as "internal
change" and thus continuation of a unitary "language".  Otherwise, what's
the point?
 
>In the latter case its first native
>speaker was not mutually intelligible with any dialect of any of the
>languages that contributed linguistic material to it.
 
I'm not sure what the point of this consideration is.  Is it about
"convergence", which I suppose from Dyen's perspective is cumulative
borrowing from the base to the creole?  Again, in the case of Hawaiian
Pidgin, i.e., an English-based creole, that is not the case any more than
it is the case for all kinds of dialects of English regardless of their
ancestry.  And in practical terms we must now realise that "mutual
intelligibility" is a theoretical notion which has not been defined in
Dyen's perspective.  It remains to be seen, for example, whether some
English-speaking area in the Midwest US would find "Hawaiian Pidgin" or
Glasgow (working class) English more difficult to understand.  And it does
not strike me that the results would be relevant to Dyen's proposal.  Would
they refute it if Glasgow was more difficult to understand than Hawaiian P?
To take an extreme example, a makeshift pidgin based on English would
probably be easier to understand for a relevant group of English-speakers
than Glasgow English for comparable messages.  Yet, such a pidgin as a
WHOLE hardly descends from (Old) English (indeed a makeshift pidgin is not
a "whole" in the sense that any historical language is, or in any sense
amenable to linguistic analysis), while, for the sake of argument, Glasgow
English as a WHOLE does descend from (Old) English.
 
I appreciate Dyen's attempt to articulate the traditional assumptions of
"genetic relationship", but I question the success of that attempt.  I find
the part about "mutual intelligibility" least succesful, and unnecessary.
-- Benji