Cladistic language concepts

[bwald]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In response to my last message, Isidore Dyen wrote:
 
>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.
 
I did not mean to focus on  social resistance to change (which I take to
mean change emanating from outside the local community), though that also
happens to the extent that vernaculars/dialects endure.  I was focussing on
the opposite, where local identity (or, more accurately, *local interests*)
promotes change (encourages change originating within the community).  The
general idea is that groups or networks within a local community are
continually affected by changes in the social composition of that
community, often immigration of new populations into the community.  As a
matter of course, the newer populations most often assimilate to the
linguistic norms of the local community.  However, older segments of the
community already have established networks, etc., and they are often
relatively closed to members of the newer groups.  Linguistically, then,
the older networks are propelled to change some features of their local
language in order to preserve their more exclusive networks.  All this
happens below the level of consciousness (the conscious analog would be how
"slang"  continually changes in an "in-group" as its older norms spread to
outgroups who adopt it for some reason or other).  I am necessarily
oversimplifying the nature of social change and how it effects (and
affects) linguistic change, but there is a large (socio)linguistic
literature illustrating the point I am making, starting with (actually
predating, with less rigorous methods of demonstration) Labov's study of
linguistic (phonetic) changes among groups on Martha's Vineyard (ca. 1963).
 
 
The focus, then, is that resistance to changes in the (previous) social
structure of a LOCAL community actually promotes (rather than retards)
linguistic change.  ID is quite right that in the long run a specific
social motivation and alignment of interest groups will change, but in the
meantime it has its effect on the changes to which the local language is
subjected, these are often irreversible, they do not consider mutual
intelligibility with external groups (presumably their effect is contrary
to such a concern -- ultimately because it weakens what can be understood
locally without having to be said, the ultimate in communicative
efficiency), and finally, for all intents and purposes, there are almost
ALWAYS, i.e., at ANY time, some social changes within any community
promoting linguistic changes to differentiate various local interest
groups, even though those interest groups continually change and realign in
the long run.
 
The last point -- that changes in the social structure of a local community
are virtually always going on -- vitiates the notion that social factors
are "extraneous", if this is intended to imply that in the long run they
can be discounted or are minor in considering whether the two more
traditionally acknowledged factors of the balance between "(linguistic)
effort" and "intelligibility" are sufficient to account for the direction
of (cumulative) linguistic change within a "language".  On the contrary, up
to the present, history indicates the continual long-term fragmentation of
languages and destruction of mutual intelligibility.  The vanescence and
short-sightedness of LOCAL SOCIAL factors promoting any particular
linguistic change (operating below the level of consciousness) no doubt
accounts for most of the fragmentation of languages and loss of mutual
intelligibility (among the fragments) in the long run.
 
 
In view of the above, it seems to me that any "balancing" pairs or sets of
changes to preserve mutual intelligibility are independent factors which
apply primarily WITHIN any particular LOCAL variety of a language, with
*questionable* inevitability, and have little if any effect on the eventual
fragmentation of a language into mutually unintelligible newer "languages",
with (virtually) *unquestionable* inevitability.  We are certainly
interested in these balancing or "equilibrium-maintaining" mechanisms, but
they seem to be quite separate from possibly short-term constantly changing
social factors as the MAJOR factor in linguistic fragmentation and loss of
mutual intelligibility across local communities.