Cladistic language concepts

[Ghiselin, Michael]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
          To Benji Wald
 
               Your message of 9/4/98 arrived when it was inconvenient
          for me to answer, at least thoughtfully.
               My puzzle with respect to languages is only somewhat
          helped by the langue/parole contrast.  It is easy for a
          systematic zoologist to say that the relationship between an
          organism and his, her, or his and her species is that of
          part to whole.  A species is a sexually-reproducing
          community.  There are also language communities of which
          organisms, the speakers of the language, are parts.  Then
          one asks what langue and parole are and it would seem that
          parole is an activity and langue how that activity gets
          carried out.  This, however, does not give us what seem to
          be the analogues of organism and species, i.e., idiolect and
          language.  They seem to both be langue, but parole holds
          them together much as sex holds species together.  On the
          other hand idiolects and languages are behavioral and
          functional entities.  So we can describe them, just as we
          can describe organisms and species, in terms of their
          properties, which change during both ontogeny and phylogeny,
          but the properties of these entities are not the entities
          themselves.  It looks to me as if an idiolect is an
          organism's disposition to behave in a certain way, and a
          language a system of such dispositions that are mutually
          coadapted.  But I am still trying to think this through.  I
          do appreciate what you said about your interest not being
          the metaphysics but the empirical evidence that is relevant
          to solving the problem.  For me the exercise is very much an
          empirical matter.
 
          Michael Ghiselin