Cladistic language concepts

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I will take up only one point, the one regarding social resistance to
change based on the desire to maintain identity. The facts seem to
indicate that such resistance is usually coupled with some other basis of
resistance such as a political, religious, or economic motivation. The
omplication is that such resistance tends to disappear with the
disappearance of the motivation. I am not sure that a case can be
cited of such resistance apart from such extraneous considerations, but
perhaps you have examples.
On Mon, 5 Oct 1998, bwald wrote:
 
> Sorry I did not have time to reply to Isidore Dyen's message sooner.  He
 writes:
>
> >one of the main factors in linguistic change and
> >perhaps the main factor is the drive for efficiency in communication which
> >is dialectically resisted by the need for clarity so that efficiency does
> >not actually increase and the actual level of clarity does not change.
>
> I think there is good reason to keep these two traditional factors in mind
> in any attempt to understand constraints on linguistic change *overall*.
> There are, however, other factors involved in promoting change beside
> efficiency of communication, if that is intended to refer specifically to
> communication of *referential* information.  There is also the factor of
> maintaining some kind of (local) social identity, viewable as a shorthand
> for shared knowledge of the local society, and therefore contributing to
> communication (esp what can be understood within the social group *without
> having to be said*).  An important issue is the extent to which the
> continual nature of the (socio)linguistic reformation of social identity,
> as society continually changes, promotes linguistic change, even overriding
> wider concerns with communication of referential information.  This may not
> be a constant at all times.  Maybe sometimes it is more active than at
> other.  It is not clear that there is a constant balance between social
> factors promoting linguistic change and the counter-pull of intelligibility
> (to whom? ALL speakers of the "language"?  Doubtful.)
>
> One possibility is that there are constantly at least TWO regsiters (or
> styles or whatever) for all mature speakers, one for wider communication,
> e.g., standards and other lingua francas, and one more susceptible to
> linguistic change due to the local social identity effect (usually called
> the "dialect" or "vernacular").  The more lingua-franca like register is
> also susceptible to change, not to mention interpenetration of what might
> be viewed as (at least) two registers/styles.  However, it remains to be
> seen how change in one register affects change in another.  In any case, it
> affects the relation between the two more traditional factors maintaining
> "balance" between  "efficiency" and "intelligibility" remains an issue in
> need of more consideration in understanding the shaping of linguistic
> change.
>
> ID continues:
>
> >I believe your characterization of mutual intelligibility as being an
> >arbitrary criterion is a misconception. After all it concerns
> >intercommunication, the primary function of language. The difficulty with
> >mutual intelligibility lies rather in applying it and improvements in that
> >area could be achieved if the importance of distinguishing languages from
> >each other could reach the level of attracting financial support.
>
> I wouldn't dispute that.  It's worth noting, however, that
> intercommunication as the primary function of language should lead to more
> concern to promote multilingualism than it does in societies such as the
> US, among others.  This tells us something more generalisable about
> concerns with intercommunication and its mitigation by the social identity
> factor.  Even so, multilingualism attracts more financial support than
> mutual intelligibility within what is considered one language.  The Ebonics
> controversy was an interesting issue in trying to move a variety (of
> language) from one category (dialect variation) to another
> (multilingualism).
>
> ID concludes:
>
> >As for entropy it could not be expected to be found in the structure of a
> >language since the energy input to maintain clarity prevents observable
> >change in the direction of disorganization. However within a language
> >regarded as a closed system, there is (for all practical purposes)
> >observable changes in the direction of disorganization in
> >dialectalization as diversification tending toward the shattering of a
> >language. The opposing force is the rate of interlocution; as that rate
> >is high it militates against diversification and if it is high
> >enough, promotes homogeneity and when it is low or decreases is
> >accompanied by increased dialectalization and if it reaches zero, may
> >be followed by language fission.
>
> I found the entropy analogy attractive when I read it in an earlier
> message.  The rate of interlocution is a more complex notion.  It may not
> only be frequency, but also, in some currently hard to specify sense,
> diversity and/or quality of communication among different groups of
> interlocutors.  Note that *inter*locution already dismisses passive
> absorption of linguistic norms from the media, whether TV, books or
> whatever, in favor of mutual communication, even though passive absorption
> of media norms may be more frequent than active communication for many
> speakers.  One must seek to understand why this is so, to the (large)
> extent that it is.
>
> I still maintain that measures of mutual intelligibility are difficult to
> interpret in the real world because linguistic distance is not the only
> factor involved in intelligibility in the real world.   Familiarity and
> motivation to understand (just as in the case of unquestionable
> bilingualism, and either one, arguably, even without motivation to imitate
> (accomodate?)) are additional factors.
>
>
>