Culture trumps biology in language development, study argues (fwd link)

[jess tauber]

Well, off topically, I've been reworking the Periodic Table, at both electronic and nuclear levels, and have found numerous new, previously unnoticed relations to the Pascal Triangle and the Golden Ratio. The latter appear in natural phenomena, both inanimate and living, all over the place, and at every scale. It should therefore not be surprising that people are looking into language structure and usage along these lines as well. I also dabble in optical theory, one application of my work may give us the ability to create new space telescope objectives on the scale of many miles or larger, cheaply, that will let us image planets around other stars. We'll be able to watch the pod people squabble about their endangered communicative systems. Exolinguists, sign up now.

As for word roots and their naturalness within particular language systems, it seems to me that there is always a reworking going on, ultimately based on some semiotic principle or other, at some constructional level. Continuous metamorphosis. This might explain the distribution of sound symbolism in the languages of the world, against morphosyntactic type, word formation, etc. It reminds me a bit of the heirloom hammer where the father had to replace the head after it rusted through, and the son got a new handle after the original rotted.

Jess Tauber