Cladistic language concepts

[Roger Wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
>    I have really enjoyed Michael Ghiselin's contribution to this list.
>Analogies from biology have been very powerful in linguistics (as many
>of the responses have shown.) So it's comforting to see that so many of
>the foundational concepts in biology are as problematic and ill-defined
>as the foundational concepts in linguistics.
 
        The great value of these interesting discussions has been
in the demonstration that the two fields are not identical, and that the
analogies from biology are only helpful if we don't take them too
seriously.
        It's time to do the same with the pervasive analogy from the
construction industry, isn't it, and accept that languages aren't really
"structures" at all, however helpful that analogy once was ...
                                                        RW