Cladistic language concepts

[bwald]

----------------------------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.