The Neolithic Hypothesis

[Robert Whiting]

On Sun, 28 Mar 1999 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

>I wrote:
><<I have some reason to believe that a simple change in locale
>and neighbors can account for the lexical or basic phonological
>differences between Greek and Sanskrit in a relatively short time
>(much shorter than the 2000-3000 years you've estimated.)
>Ancient German and Latin traveled a much shorter distance to
>become modern English and French in a much shorter time.>>

>In a message dated 3/25/99 2:00:39 AM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:

><<What has distance traveled to do with it?  The dialect of Lazio
>didn't travel at all, and it's still very different from Latin.>>

>But this is aside from the point being made.

>The point was that the difference between Greek and Vedic
>Sanskrit and their common ancestor could be explained
>geographically.

And the counterpoint was that they could be but they don't have
to be.

>I was saying was that when speakers of a common language go to
>different geographical locations, their languages will
>predictably lose commonality.

And if they stay in the same place and are not in regular and
strong contact they will also lose commonality.  There are a
number of ways for languages or dialects to lose contact.  They
may be physically separated by migration or by natural barriers
(mountains, rivers) or they may be artificially separated by
political boundaries or social stratification.  Professional
argots are also an interesting instance of artificial separation
that may include linking across normal language boundaries.

>This is rather obvious and I'm sure you are making some other
>point, but I'll address it just to be clear.  Distance in terms
>of geography will predictably have an effect on the way two
>languages diverge from a common ancestor.

I hope that you are not trying to say that one can predict the
degree to which languages will diverge based on the geographical
distance between them.  I am rather disturbed by your persistent
use of "predictably" in all of these statements.  If there is one
thing that we know about language change, it is that it is not
predictable.  If it were, we could write algorithms for language
change based on time and geographical distance and sit back and
let the computers solve all the problems of historical
linguistics.  The only thing predictable about language change
is that languages change.  Living languages do it constantly.
There are always changes going on, which, for the most part, the
speakers of the language are unaware of.  It is usually in
retrospect that these changes can be identified and analyzed.

>Otherwise we'd have to think that, say, the differences between
>Low and Upper German had nothing to do with geographical
>difference.  From the names themselves - geographical
>distinctions - distance did split these dialects. Would the split
>between Low and Upper German have occurred if all the earlier
>speakers have stayed in the same location?  Are we to think that
>the difference between Norweigan and Danish would have developed
>anyway, even if they were not geographically separated?

Part of the point is that Swedish and Danish are farther apart
linguistically than Danish and (at least some dialects) of
Norwegian.  The amount of geographical separation cannot predict
the degree of divergence.

<snip>

[MCV]:
><<I don't think you need external causes at all to account for
>language change.  It just happens.>>

>And this is so obviously untrue that I can only think that I've
>misunderstood you here, once again.

>[ Moderator's comment: Modern Icelandic has, until very recently,
>  been unaffected by linguistic externals, yet it has changed
>  radically in pronunciation from Old Norse. You have obviously
>  misunderstood MCV's point:  Languages change, and they do so
>  without external cause.  The existence of external forces in
>  some kinds of linguistic change do not necessitate their
>  existence in all forms of change.
>  --rma ]

>You've mentioned the possible 30% non-IE in German vocabulary.
>If you accept that possibility, the only way you can account for
>it is "external causes." You mentioned that the way B-S may have
>obscured elements of Germanic or Greek may have done the same to
>Armenian. These are causes external to the languages themselves.

When you get right down to it, almost all language changes are
external to the languages themselves.  That is why I would prefer
the expression "foreign influence" to "external causes."

It is my impression that almost all linguistic change is brought
about by sociological factors.  This impression is based on the
following observations:

1) Linguistic change is unpredictable.  By this I mean that the
   onset of a particular change at any given time can not be
   anticipated.  Once a change has started or been completed, it
   can be analyzed and classified and (probably) parallels for
   such a change can be found in other languages.  But the
   trigger for the change can not be shown to be the linguistic
   situation because one can also (probably) find parallel
   linguistic situations in other languages in which the change
   did not occur.  Therefore the trigger for the change must come
   from outside the language (or outside language in general).
   Analogical changes to restore morphological features levelled
   by phonological change might appear to be an exception (as
   might analogical change in general, since a model form must
   already exist in the language for analogy to be productive),
   but in this case it is simply a reaction to a change
   (phonological) that did not have its origin in the linguistic
   situation (on this seeming contradiction, see below, point 5).

2) Any part of language can change.  Changes can be observed in
   phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon.  I think (someone
   will correct me if I am wrong) that there is no part of a
   language that can be considered immutable.  Even features
   that were long considered inherent to a language, like word
   order or intonation, can and do change.

3) Linguistic change is irregular.  With the exception of sound
   changes (which the neogrammarians tell us are without
   exception and once a sound change is initiated, it will affect
   every instance of that sound in the language [but even if this
   is strictly and entirely true, which most linguists today
   doubt, the unpredictability of point 1 still applies:  it
   cannot be predicted what will change or what it will change
   into]), a change in a form or construction may or may not
   affect similar forms or constructions.  Or part of a system
   may change and leave the rest of the system unchanged.

4) Linguistic change is not unidirectional.  A change (including
   phonetic changes) that goes in one direction in one language
   may go in the opposite direction in another language.  One can
   count up the number of instances for the change in each
   direction and say which direction is statistically more likely
   for the change, but in essence, there is no change that is
   impossible (although some are extremely unlikely).  Whether
   linguistic change is reversible is a different issue from the
   question on non-unidirectionality. Most linguists tend to
   avoid discussions of reversibility (although there are clear
   examples, mostly learned restorations), but I suspect that
   this is mostly because if changes are reversed, it plays merry
   hell with historical linguistics. :>

5) Linguistic change can cause conflict in the language.  This is
   a result of an inherent conflict in language between phonology
   and morphology.  Since language expresses meaning through
   phonological form, there is constantly a conflict between
   phonological simplicity (ease and speed of articulation) and
   morphological complexity (more overt morphological marking to
   disambiguate meaning).  What we have, then, is an "engineering
   trade-off" where changes for the better on one side will
   usually introduce changes for the worse on the other.  Thus a
   phonological change that reduces overt morphological
   distinctions will frequently be countered by an analogical
   change that restores some (if not all) of the lost
   morphological marking.  Thus while it may seem that analogical
   change is brought about by the linguistic situation, it is
   rather a response to a natural conflict between two competing
   systems, and, while it may be systematic, it is still
   unpredictable and irregular.  But even the phonological change
   that causes the response is not necessarily caused by an
   attempt a phonological simplification, since many phonological
   changes result in more complex, or no overall change in,
   phonology, so even a rule that phonological changes result in
   simplified phonology is not predictable.

Given these observations, it is obvious that the only thing about
linguistic change that is predictable is change itself, and that
has nothing to do with language per se but is a by-product of the
second law of thermodynamics.  Furthermore, with the exception of
analogical restoration of morphological marking, a linguistic
situation is seldom seen to be the trigger for a linguistic
change, and even when it is (e.g., extension of morphology by
analogy), the nature and extent of the change is not predictable.
Since linguistic change cannot be seen to originate within
language, it must be imposed (consciously or unconsciously) by
its users, human beings, and therefore is sociological in nature
since language use is a socio-cultural phenomenon.

The sociological factors that affect (or effect) linguistic
change would seem to have to do with such things as intergroup
relationships and intragroup or cultural bonding. (I am not a
sociologist, so this terminology may not be current; I remember
sociology as the course where it didn't do any good to have last
year's exam -- they always asked the same questions - only the
answers changed :).)

A high prestige language or dialect is likely to trigger changes
in languages or dialects in contact with it by imitation.  But it
is not just high prestige languages that cause changes.  Thus
historical linguistics recognizes superstratum languages (higher
prestige, e.g., conquerors), adstratum languages (more or less
equal prestige, i.e, neighbors or ethno-linguistic mixtures
sharing the same territory), and substratum languages (lower
prestige, e.g., conquered or servile populations).  While the
nature of the relationship between the languages may tend to
influence the types of changes that may flow between them (based
on statistical probability), again, any kind of influence of one
language on another is possible.  So all that is really needed
for one language to influence another is contact.  Even direct
contact is not needed, because, through writing, even long dead
or unused languages can cause changes (English has many Greek and
Latin neologisms).  Thus languages in almost any kind of contact
can cause changes in the lexicon (loan words and loan
translations) and grammar (areal features in phonology,
morphology and syntax) of one another.  And the locus of change
as a foreign influence is the bilingual (multilingua) individual.

Group or cultural bonding can have the opposite effect of causing
a language to deliberately be altered to make it more unlike its
neighboring languages.  Loanwords may be systematically purged
from the language to make it more specific to its culture or
group.

If linguistic change is sociological in nature, then like other
sociological changes (changes in government, religious, and
economic systems) it originates with the few, not the many.  The
many just follow along once the change is set in motion.  But
whether a change (be it of foreign or native origin) will be
accepted is a sociological phenomenon, rather like a hit song,
play, or movie, or fashions in dress or hair length.  And there
is no way to predict this.  It just happens.  Or it doesn't.

>Conversely, if you mention the fact that German retains "archaic"
>features, it assumes that change in this case DID NOT "just
>happen," but in fact failed to happen.  If you don't attribute
>some external cause for this, then why is the archaism in German
>so singular?  Chance?  Or isn't it more likely that Germanic was
>either cut-off, isolated or geographically distant from the
>"innovative core" - all external factors.

External to what? -- the language or the culture or both?  Is it
possible that Germanic peoples are simply conservative by nature,
resisting change with a fervor that is perhaps exemplified by the
current proposed orthographic revisions in German or the
resistance of English speakers to systematic spelling reforms?
Linguistic reasons for language change are really thin on the
ground.  One might as well try to explain why Europeans and North
Americans no longer wear three-cornered hats and powdered wigs
based on physiology or geography or manufacturing techniques or
conquest or substratum populations or the general unsuitability
of the hats and wigs themselves, when in fact it is a
sociological phenomenon known as fashion.

>It may be valuable for methodological purposes to suspend
>consideration of external causes in linguistics, but it cannot be
>correct to say that you don't "need external causes at all to
>account for language change.  It just happens" - especially if
>you are drawing general historical conclusions based on those
>language changes.  If the linguistic evidence is going to assume
>no external causes for change, then it can tell us nothing about
>external events.

The point is not that there are no "external" (i.e., foreign)
causes of linguistic change.  The point is that such causes are
not required for linguistic change.  Now when we have a
historical record, it may be possible to pinpoint a foreign cause
for a certain change.  But when we go prehistoric, there is no
way to tell the origin of a change just by looking at it.
Drafting in foreign causes may make for interesting stories, but
"you don't need external causes to account for language change."

<snip>

>Finally, the statement that change "just happens" inverts the
>question really, doesn't it?  If change is so inevitable, then
>why should there be any commonalities left to find in IE
>languages?  Obviously, the key to this whole thing is not what
>changed but what didn't.

You are missing the point (several points, actually).  Change may
be inevitable (finding a natural language that hasn't changed at
all over several centuries would be really unusual -- anybody got
any examples?), but it is unpredictable.  There are no natural
laws that govern language development so far discovered.  Given
a language, there is no way to predict what it will look like in
100 years or 500 years or 1000 years.  However, if we know what
that language looked like 1000 years *ago*, we can observe the
changes that have taken place.  What historical linguistics tries
to do is predict the past by observing these changes and comparing
any surviving features in cognate languages and reconstructing
the forms that may have been ancestral to all of them.  But there
are no natural laws that say how to make this prediction.  The
predictions are based on the classification of observable facts
that are taken as far back as the historical records allow us to
go and then extrapolated into prehistory.  Analogies from known
developments in historical times are often used to support a
particular reconstruction, but such analogies do not "have to be"
valid.  When many causes can produce the same effect (as our
observations show is true of language change), there is no way to
separate out the "correct" cause from all the other possible
causes.  So it is not a matter of what changed or what didn't
change.  It is a matter of accounting for all the changes and
non-changes in a consistent and concise manner.

<snip>

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi