Cladistic language concepts

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The social conditions are temporary because they are replaced by other
conditions. The effects on the language can be either temporary or
permanent. The effects are often permanent. As for the spread of
socially dominant languages, like it or not, that is going on at a great
pace and there is little that one can see in local resistance that is a
real obstacle to it.
 
On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Roger Wright quotes from my last message.
>
> >Benji Wald says:
> >
> >>On the contrary, up
> >>to the present, history indicates the continual long-term fragmentation of
> >>languages and destruction of mutual intelligibility.
>
> >Yes; nicely put. "Up to the present" --
> >There's a good case for saying this may never happen again.
>
> I'm glad that Roger appreciated the qualification I put on what I was
> saying.  I deleted a further paragraph on how I invite such views as he is
> proposing about a sharp discontinuity between the past and the future,
> since I see little reason to suppose that such a discontinuity has come
> about in the 20th c.  or will in the foreseeable future, despite impressive
> advances in communication technology (at least impressive to us current
> beings) and increasing sharing of various kinds of literacies.  Meanwhile,
> the same old problems of miscommunication that have always existed (and
> have occasionally been reported in the past) persist.  (Would it be
> surprising if "human nature" exists not only in our linguistic devices but
> in how we use them?)
>
> I think the main thing that would interest me among Roger's proposals is
> what changes in the nature of human society (as a whole or in its various
> various parts) he envisages or suggests to have relatively recently arrived
> which will override the steady and unrelenting effects of social localism
> that in the past (presumably) have been the major cause of linguistic
> fragmentation and loss of mutual intelligibility.  I am skeptical, and
> suspect he is underrating the long-term cumulative effects of localism, and
> overrating the stability of centralised power, but I am open to hearing
> interesting proposals about the "changing" relation of social change to
> linguistic change.
>
> With regard to Isidore's latest message, I share his appreciation for
> Hubey's comments, but paused at the following passage:
>
> >The point is, as I see it, that linguistic change
> is built into the way the community interacts with its language, whereas
> some aspects of linguistic change are conditioned by the social changes
> that are going on in the community. The latter type of change, since it is
> local and temporary I thought could be excluded from being regarded as
> a 'main factor', but I suppose it gets to be a matter of defintion.
>
> I'm not sure I understand the intent of "local and temporary".  The
> "temporary" part seems to suggest that the local changes are eventually
> undone, as if afterwards they seem to have never occurred (i.e., no
> *lasting* harm done to mutual intelligibility).  If that is not what is
> meant, then they have had their effect in changing the local language AWAY
> from other local varieties.  This seems more than a matter of definition
> (of "main factor"?) to me, but of the cumulative consequences of local and
> temporary (temporally bounded?) changes.
>
> Of course, most changes do spread beyond the temporary local interest group
> that intiates them, so their effects don't go away but continue, and
> establish the typical mosaic patterns we commonly find in dialect
> geography.  I cannot address all fronts at once, so when I emphasised
> fragmentation and loss of mutual intelligibility as the traditional and
> still usual focus of historical linguistics (at least on the elementary
> level), I did not complicate that traditional picture with diffusion and
> convergence which takes place across languages as well as in them, due to
> bilingualism, bidialectalism, register/stylistic complexity, or whatever
> level of analysis is appropriate at the time.  I am continually struck by
> cases in which it is not clear which family or (even more commonly *in the
> literature*) branch of a family some language (group) or other belongs to
> because of convergence and sharing of features.  Such things most
> strikingly occur at the margin of isogloss bundles.  Isidore (and no doubt
> Roger) is certainly right that channels and interests promoting
> communication ("mutual" intelligibility) *across* local groups is also a
> factor in change.
>
> The issue remains: will languages continue to fragment and produce mutual
> unintelligbility, or will the whole world eventually abandon its local
> variety in favor of some "homogeneous commercial or totalitarian English"
> or whatever (no doubt incomprehensible to us current beings).  I think not.
>