Cladistic language concepts

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Please forgive me for breaking into this discussion of cladistic concepts
and linguistics. There is a very sharp difference between the characters
of cladistics and the cognates of genetic linguistics. Homologous
characters, if I understand cladistic talk, are features that are
candidates for having the same origin in some common ancestor.
There three analogous structures that I am aware of and that deal with
procedures for inferring genetic evolution. One of these is the language
family-tree, and the other two are respectively the cladistics of biology
and the use of cultural traits in anthropology.
'Traitisitics' has a poor reputation and deservedly so. What cladistics
and the linguistic family-tree have in common is the assumption that their
basic units do not mix. Once a species or a language becomes distinct,
that distinction is indissoluble. Where traits are concerned, such an
assumption would lead nowhere because there are too many instances in
which cultures have amalgamated in a way that precludes attributing the
continuity to just one of the contributing cultures. In other words,
cultures do not behave that way.
 
As for cladistics the difficulty surrounds th issue of definable
characters. Although broadly the difference between characters is usually
easy to see, the discrimination between differences and identities in
extreme cases seem to present difficulties. Now that there is competition
from the study of DNA, it seems likely that cladistics wil serve to be
ancillary support to inferences from the more intrinsic DNA agreements and
differences.
As for linguistics, it has the advantage of the comparative method which
is based on the inferences that can be drawn from the systematic
correspondences between phonemes that characterize related languages
and raise the likelihood of inferences based on those correspondences,
thus giving the inferences scientific standing.
 
 
 On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Ghiselin, Michael wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>           Dear Dr. DeLancey:
>                Thank you very much for casting your vote.  It would be
>           nice if more linguists would do the same because the sample
>           as it exists is small and perhaps not representative.
>                In spite of that the preliminary results are very
>           interesting.  Not only has a cladistic language concept been
>           generally presupposed but, as you say, linguists do not even
>           consider the topic particularly interesting.  Why should
>           this be?  One possibility is that where linguists have a
>           written record it lacks the fragmentary nature of the fossil
>           record that results from accidents of preservation and the
>           like.  Another is that what the linguists do perceive as
>           important is trying to find older and older common
>           ancestries and the genealogical relationships are all that
>           they need.  Linguists do not have the elaborate system of
>           categories, such as phylum, class, order etc., that we
>           zoologists do.  And unless I am mistaken (please correct me
>           if I am) they do not believe that there are important
>           differences that need to be expressed by giving a taxon a
>           higher rank, as when our own species has been put in a
>           separate order or even kingdom.
>                Linguists must have methodological problems with
>           respect to paraphyly, parallelism and convergence.  But so
>           far as I can tell, they treat these as problems to be
>           overcome in reaching a strictly genealogical arrangement.
>           MG
>