Dixon's "The rise and fall of languages"

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
 
But language splits need never occur at all.
It still seems important to realize that under normal circumstances
languages only "split" when the relevant groups of speakers are
mostly out of contact with each other (and not necessarily even then).
Greek has changed, but it is still one language, Greek, for the speakers
are still in contact with each other.
        The only reason I know of for exceptions to this are in literate
communities, where different areas might start writing in different ways
(this is what precipitated the conceptual split of what we now think of
as being separate Romance languages, for example). The Carrasquer Vidal
- Manaster Ramer discussion seeems not to refer to literate communities,
so it seems sensible to point out that if we find out that relevant
groups are still physically together, over whatever length of time, we
would not expect a split at all.
                                                RW
 
 
 
 
On Sat, 9 May 1998, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
>
>One argument that I hadn't seen before is given on pp. 29-30.  It is
>based on the assumptions that PIE is 6,000 years old, and human
>language 17 times as old as that, 100,000 years.  At the IE rate of
>language split (100 IE lgs. in 6,000 years), that would have given
>10^34 languages today (or even 10^60 at the Austronesian rate), when
>in fact we only have 5,000.
>
>        If we adopted a more modest rate of splitting, supposing that
>        a language is likely to split into two languages every 6,000
>        years, we would expect proto-Human to have given rose to2^17,
>        or about 130,000, modern languages.  If we allow for a number
>        of languages becoming extinct along the way, this would be a
>        more reasonable number. [..] The lesson from these
>        calculations is that language split and expansion on the
>        scale that is put forward for the IE and Austronesian
>        families is highly unusual.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
>
>Hold it right there.  Of course the expansions of IE and AN are
>unusual. But do the numbers constitute an argument against the family
>tree model?  Do they support the notion that "Language development
>during the past 100,000 and more years has involved long periods of
>equilibrium, with only the occasional punctuation"?  Dixon correctly
>notes that the IE expansion in Australia and the Americas has been at
>the expense of a 1,000 languages dead or dying.  We cannot just
>"allow for a number of languages becoming extinct", we have to
>include the extinctions in the mathematical model.  If that's not
>done, the argument comes dangerously close to rejecting the "family
>tree model" for rabbits because of the absurd rate of growth forecast
>by the Fibonacci series.
>
>Introducing the notion of "punctuated equilibrium" into linguistics
>is an interesting idea.  I certainly agree with Dixon that certain
>phenomena of language change (transitions between head and dependent
>marking, certain kinds of phonological and lexical change, etc. can
>and do take place in short periods of time), and that even the origin
>of language itself might be adequately explained as a sudden
>punctuation.
>
>On the other hand, I'm deeply troubled by some of the unexplained
>assumptions in Dixon's model.  Most importantly, Dixon's assertion
>that a state of equilibrium is unobservable:
>
>        European scientists have only ever been able to observe a
>        time of punctuation since, wherever Europeans go (with their
>        weapons and religions and writing), they effect a punctuation
>        in the existing state of equilibrium
>
>and:
>
>        No equilibrium situation ever has been or ever could be
>        observed by a scientist (although it can be readily
>        reconstructed for Australia, and probably also for other
>        parts of the world)
>
>
>I'm also troubled by the notion of a "punctuation" that keeps going
>on for "the last 2,000 years" (p. 4).
>
>But let's allow these premises and see what difference they make in
>practical terms for historical linguistics.
>
>Dixon states the family tree model is only valid for periods of
>punctuation, when a "proto-language" spreads out and diversifies into
>a number of daughter languages.  After some time, equilibrium is
>restored, and, within an area of diffusion, languages are repeatedly
>said to "converge on a common prototype", regardless of their genetic
>origin.  It is well known that phonology, lexicon and grammatical
>categories are readily diffused.  Grammatical forms (morphemes) are
>much more resistant, "but during periods of equilibrium there was
>time-a-plenty (perhaps tens of millennia) and then grammatical forms
>certainly were borrowed".  Language families "are slowly blurred" (p.
>71).  "In time, the convergence will obscure the original genetic
>relationships" (p. 96).  "Family membership ceases to be a useful
>concept" (p. 99).  But, perhaps surprsingly, the languages in a
>linguistic area in equilibrium do not merge (p. 71).  And most
>surprisngly of all, when a new episode of punctuation ensues, and new
>language families are created, Dixon warns that "the language family
>may have emanated not from a single language, but from a small areal
>group of distinct languages, with similar structures and forms".
>This obviously undermines the very concept of a "genetic group", in
>spite of Dixon's basic Assumption #4 that "each language has a single
>parent".
>
>In even more practical terms, Dixon reviews some concrete examples:
>Austronesian (a classical case where the family tree model works
>adequately in general), Australia and the Americas.
>
>There is considerable controversy at the moment about the date of
>earliest human settlement of the American continent.  There is
>surprisingly little evidence for settlement before the Clovis horizon
>of 12,000 BP, although a slightly earlier date (perhaps 16,000 or
>20,000 BP) is now beginning to be accepted in archaeological circles.
>
>The great linguistic diversity of the Americas, however, is a major
>problem for linguists, and leaves only two options open: either to
>accept the archaeological dates and to hell with the linguistics (my
>assessment of Greenberg's "Language in the Americas"), or to posit a
>more reasonable date for the initial settlement and to hell with
>archaeology (my assessment of Johanna Nichols' argument for a
>time-depth of c. 35,000 years, which I share).  Dixon, armed with his
>model of punctuated equilibrium, sees no problem:
>
>        [Nichols' argument].  I take a viewpoint that is
>        diametrically opposed.  The fact that so many language
>        families are recognisable indicates a relatively recent
>        series of language splits, quite compatible with a
>        12,000-20,000-year period.  Give the languages in the
>        Americas another 20,000 years and the diffusional patterns
>        that are now emerging would become far more pervasive.
>
>Counterintuitive to say the least.
>
>But, given the authors admission that "It was largely in order to
>adequately account for the linguistic situation in Australia that I
>had recourse to the idea of P.EQ. as a model for language
>development", we should turn to Australia next.
>
>The c. 260 languages of Australia show many similarities, and "have
>been said to comprise a single language family".  One supposed
>(sub-)family, Pama-Nyungan, covers about 85% of the continent.
>However, neither for Pama-Nyungan (apparently [p. 91] a
>lexicostatistic construct), nor for Australian as a whole have family
>trees or proto-languages been succesfully set up.  "It is possible to
>establish low-level subgroups in Australia -- groups of from two to a
>dozen or so languages that appear to have a close genetic
>relationship", but the usefulness of the family tree concept as far
>as Australia goes is apparently so low, that Dixon does not even
>bother to mention the number of distinct genetic groups.
>
>
>        It is likely that the whole of Australia was populated within
>        a few thousand years of the first colonisation, about 50,000
>        BP.  Many scholars believe that all Australian languages
>        belong to one linguistic family.  Assuming this hypothesis
>        there are two alternative scenarios:
>
>        (i) Proto-Australian, the putative ancestor of all the modern
>        languages, was spoken by some of the first people in
>        Australia, about 50,000 years ago.
>
>        (ii) Modern Australian languages are descended from a proto-
>        langugae that was spoken much more recently -- say, 10,000 or
>        5,000 years ago.
>
>Hypothesis (ii) is dismissed, because we do not find pockets or
>substrates of non-Australian languages, and there is no plausible
>mechanism (like agriculture) to explain the expansion.  "We are left
>with scenario (i)":  rapid expansion (punctuation) throughout the
>whole continent, followed by essentially 50,000 years of equilibrium
>until the English invasion, during which time the Asutralian
>languages gradually converged to "a common prototype".  This is, as
>Dixon states, "the only model able to explain the relationships
>between languages in Australia" (p. 68).
>
>Is it?  One might object that New Guinea, settled at the same time as
>Australia, and united to it by a land-bridge until c. 10,000 years
>ago, despite some areal characteristics, and despite an attested
>punctuation with the arrival of Austronesian-speakers maybe 4,000
>years ago, shows a bewildering linguistic diversity, parallelled
>nowhere on earth.  Dixon blames this on the mountainous character of
>New Guinea (and, similarly, the Caucasus).  And then, how tranquil
>was the Australian equilibrium during those 50,000 years?  On p. 92,
>Dixon suggest that the low-level genetic groupings that he recognizes
>in Australia arose during the last of possibly several cycles of
>contraction of the population to the coast and main rivers during
>periods of drought, followed by expansion when conditions improved.
>Repeated episodes of contraction and expansion may well have blurred
>the genetic affiliations of the Australian languages by the processes
>described by Ross (loc.cit.), such as language/"linkage" fusion.
>Elsewhere (note, p.76, we are told that the population of Tasmania,
>part of Australia until 10,000 years ago, did not have axes,
>spear-throwers, boomerangs or dingoes.  It seems to me that the
>introduction of those items, after 10,000 BP, might have caused quite
>a bit of punctuation (and incidentally makes a good candidate for
>the mechanism of expansion required by scenario (ii) above).
>
>Finally, Ross (op.cit, p. 244), mentions an important socio-cultural
>factor, not mentioned by Dixon at all, which seems to be of the
>utmost importance to explain the "blurring" of sound-correspondences,
>and the consequent difficulty in establishing family trees and
>proto-languages.  It bears repeating here.  The case has been
>described for a group of related languages in southern New Caledonia:
>
>        Because the south New Caledonian languages were closely
>        related, there were once regular sound correspondences
>        between their vocabularies.  Where speakers regularly used
>        two or more lects, they had an intuitive grasp of some of
>        these correspondences and used them to convert the
>        phonological shapes of words from one lect to another.
>        However, the speakers' intuitive correspondences and the real
>        correspondences resulting from historical change often
>        differed from each other.
>
>The result of this "Volkskomparativismus" is that the
>sound-correspondences are FUBAR, a complete mess.
>
>        Similar situations to the one described for New Caledonia
>        also occur in parts of Australia.  In traditional aboriginal
>        Australia each person belonged to an exogamous patriclan and
>        spoke its emblematic patrilect.  However, aboriginal
>        Australians moved around hunting and gathering in bands whose
>        members belonged to different patriclans.  A number of
>        patrilects, often quite closely related to each other, were
>        typically represented in a band, and band members spoke their
>        own and other members' patrilects.  Their vocabularies seem
>        to have been affected in much the same way as those of the
>        south New Caledonian lects.
>
>While this picture is not in itself incompatible with Dixon's state
>of equilibrium, it offers the advantage of actually explaining why
>and how some of the languages might have converged in a way that is
>not readily tractable by traditional comparativist means.
>
>
>Finally, a word of caution to linguists.  As Dixon states in his
>introduction, "many groups of linguists may be offended by what is
>said about their area of specialisation".  Africanists may not like
>Dixon's assessment of their field on pp. 32-33.  If there are still
>some lexicostatisticians/glottochronologists around (and Dixon
>chastises on Australian member of the species) they won't like pp.
>35-37.  "Armchair typologists" and linguists *talking* about
>"endangered languages" are dealt with elsewhere.  The heaviest
>criticisms, however, are reserved for two sub-species: the
>formalists, and the Nostraticists.
>
>Formal theories (Chomskyan or not) have a "typical half-life [of] six
>to ten years", and "few formalists do attempt to write comprehensive
>grammars of languages (which is just as well [..])", although some of
>them do from time to time consult the descriptive gammars written by
>"real linguists".  They are "like a group of 'surgeons', none of whom
>has ever actually performed an operation, giving courses of lectures
>on the principles of surgery".
>
>Nostraticists (or 'Nostraticists' as Dixon calls them), especially of
>the Russian kind "openly boasted (and still boast) that they are
>cleverer than anyone who has come before" [reference?], their
>theories are "palpable poppycock", and "they have put forward the
>idea that the main thing to be considered when formulating a genetic
>connection between two languages is lexemes" [no reference].  "There
>is no reputable linguist [defined as "anyone who teaches the subject
>at a leading university in the USA or in a EEC nation"], anywhere in
>the world, who accepts the claims of Greenberg and the
>Nostraticists".  If we accept Dixon's punk-eek model, "there could be
>no tempation to perpetrate anything such as 'Nostratic'".
>
>        These 'Nostraticists' purport to work in terms of the
>        comparative method, by assembling cognate sets.  However,
>        they achieve their results only by allowing excessive
>        phonological and semantic leeway.  In the 'reconstructions',
>        scarcely any vowels are specified (given just as V), N is
>        often employed for an unspecified nasal, and so on.
>
>Regrettably, Prof. Dixon, with this last remark, makes it painfully
>clear that he has never so much as set eyes on Illich-Svitych's
>Nostratic dictionary...
>
>Apart from the unfounded accusations, the only reasoned critique
>against the "Nostratic fallacy" in Dixon's book is the following:
>
>        It is not sensible policy to try and compare the original
>        proto-languages of language families, and attempt to
>        reconstruct a  proto-proto-tableau.  Firstly, we have only an
>        approximate idea of what a proto-language was like. Secondly,
>        it may not have been one language, but instead a group of
>        languages.  And thirdly, proto-languages or
>        proto-linguistic-situations are likely to be the product of
>        diffusional convergence, at the end of a period of
>        equilibrium, rather than languages which result from a
>        family-tree-type expansion and split.
>
>Of course, to agree with objections (2) and (3), one has to buy into
>Dixon's punctuated quilibrium model, which I'm not prepared to do
>right now.  As to the first objection, well, let's do away with
>archaeology and paleontology as well, then.
>
>
>
>=======================
>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>mcv at wxs.nl
>Amsterdam
>